Gabrielle Civil
In Fall 2023, I began developing Where Would I Be Without You? an event series on poetry and friendship for Small Press Traffic. To inform this work, I had the privilege of accessing, learning from, and dreaming into the SPT Archive. Wow! The flyers, poetry collections, anthologies, and little magazines there were incredible. Poets were reading together to support incarcerated writers. Poets were getting violent at a Buddhist retreat. Poets were dreaming into queer feminist eco-paradise. Quiet experiments sat next to loud demands.
The work spanned diverse racial, cultural, and literary lineages from across SPT’s five decades. There was so much juicy material, I started taking pictures of posters, book covers, tables of contents, and individual texts to capture my research. After 6 months, I had over 350 images! Many appeared in My San Francisco, my closing performance of the series. While I loved myriad things in the SPT archive, the recommendations below most directly informed and reflected the themes of Where Would I Be Without You? I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.
Hello, I'm Erica Jong by Kathy Acker
Ooooh! I do love it when the archives get shady. . . This little book gestures towards the professional envy and absurdity that can be a part of any literary scene. (Check out the cartoon demon!)
Where Would I Be Without You? by Judy Grahn & Pat Parker
This 1976 LP gave the series its name and served as it starting inspiration. The Listening Party for this record kicked things off and featured a live conversation with Grahn who shared poignant memories of her beloved friend.
Black Feeling, Black Talk by Nikki Giovanni
This book invites a specific way of being in the archive. For My San Francisco, I hid my personal copy under a chair and invited the audience member who found it to read the poem, “You Came, Too.” and absurdity that can be a part of any literary scene. (Check out the cartoon demon!)
for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enough by Ntozake Shange
This book is classic of Black feminist poetry and performance. It highlights a key Bay Area artistic lineage arising from women of color performing their truths in the world.
whistling the avant-garde: an anthology, ed. Mimi Tempestt
This collection of innovative work by writers of color accompanied a vibrant exhibition and event series that preceded and inspired Where Would I Be Without You?
Clamor, Fall 1996
This issue of Renée Gladman’s excellent journal also boasts a sublime cover image by Solange Gould (is that gender euphoria?) along with smart, tender writing.
Jazz Fan Looks Back by Jayne Cortez
This book embodies the mode of archives. I was blessed to know this visionary poet whose musicality dazzles and whose political vitality remains a rallying cry.
Subliminal Time ed. Leslie Scalapino
Robert Grenier’s handwriting on the cover of this book is one of the most gorgeous poems I’ve ever seen. Kudos to Leslie Scalapino for compiling this lush volume.
The Party : A Chronological Perspective on a Confrontation at a Buddhist Seminary prepared and written by members of the Investigative Poetry Group, at the Naropa Institute, June 16 - July 13, 1977
This book is nuts! I love how it highlights the potential tensions of poetry community and how the archive can enshrine and elucidate conflict.
The Black Aesthetic Season III: Black Interiors ed. nan collymore
This book shows how writing can emerge from watching movies together. We did this in Where Would I Be Without You? in our Watch Party Workshops on Poetic Justice and Tongues Untied.
Brother to Brother: New Writings by Black Gay Men ed. Essex Hemphill, conceived by Joseph Beam
This rich book resonates with Riggs’ film and offers a time capsule of resistance and articulates a brilliant legacy of gay Black men.
Aché: A Journal for Lesbians of African Descent, February/ March 1992, Vol 4. No 1
This groundbreaking journal shows how important little magazines can be for offering visibility and nourishing community. The letters to the editor were my favorite.
Of Cities & Women by Etel Adnan
This book brings Etel Adnan’s lyrical, global perspective to bear on our current moment of reckoning and resistance.
Bay Poetics ed. Stephanie Young
This book was perfect for my performance of bibliomancy in My San Francisco. Its introduction speaks to the networks of relationships found in this capacious anthology.
City Lights Journal, No. 3
This issue features some of the most famous (and infamous) Beat poets of the Bay area, many of whom appear on the cover.
Afrodisia by Ted Joans
It’s not often that you see a naked Black man on the cover of a poetry collection. Joans’ poems match this combination of bravado, vulnerability, and masculine Black pride.
Tripwire 5: Expanding the Repertoire: Continuity & Change in African American Writing
Like the African American literary tradition showcased in this book, the archive itself is a space of continuity and change — and so are friendship, literary community, and my own creative practice.
The Flame Through the Bridge: Notes and Transcripts from Improvised, Interpreted Poem Performances, 2014 - 2019 by Antena Aire (Jen Hofer + JD Pluecker)
This collaborative chapbook documents performance and offers innovative, politically responsive models for translation and collaboration.
Imagine Us, The Swarm by Muriel Leung
This gorgeous book blurs genres and offers a polyvocal representation of self and / in community. The imagination, us, and swarm here evoke many things to me, including the audience of a performance.
A Secretary to the Spirits by Ishmael Reed, illustrated by Bettye Saar
“What?! Ishmael and Bettye worked on a book together?” one audience member said during My San Francisco. I didn’t know either until the SPT archives showed off this book.
A Toast in the House of Friends by Akilah Oliver
The ritual poetics in this book are aligned with my conviction that the archive is full of the spirits / of loved ones.
Heaven is All Goodbyes by Tongo Eisen-Martin
This book by the current Poet Laureate of San Francisco is incendiary, heartbreaking and wise and should be read slowly, loud, and often.
+ Bonus: My San Francisco - Gabrielle Civil
The recording of this performance, the last event of Where Would I Be Without You?, is my contribution to the archives.
Gabrielle Civil is a black feminist performance artist, poet, and writer, originally from Detroit, MI. She has premiered over fifty performance artworks worldwide including Black Weirdo School (Pop Up Critique) (2023), the déjà vu—live (2022) and Jupiter (2021). Her performance memoirs include Swallow the Fish (2017), Experiments in Joy (2019), (ghost gestures) (2021), and the déjà vu (2022.) Her writing has also appeared in New Daughters of Africa, Bone Bouquet, Poem-a-Day, Tripwire, Kitchen Table Translation, Migrating Pedagogies and Experiments in Joy: a Workbook. A 2023 Performance Fellow at the Franconia Sculpture Park, she earned her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from New York University and teaches at the California Institute of the Arts. The aim of her work is to open up space.
