Albion Sheaf

Book Launch with Simon Pettet

6.30pm Weds 8th March

Wivenhoe Bookshop

Join us for the launch of this excellent new collection from Wivenhoe’s Mica Press. Simon Pettet is an English-born poet, now a long-time resident of New York.

About the Poet

Pettet was born in England in 1953, and attended the University of Essex in the early 70’s, where he studied under the poet Ted Berrigan and co-edited (alongside poets Ralph Hawkins and Douglas Oliver) six issues of the magazine The Human Handkerchief.

Following his graduation, he moved to London, and was awarded an M.A. in American Studies, studying under legendary poet-scholar Eric Mottram. ,  He published three small volumes An Enigma and Other Lyrics, and Saturday Morning and Leaving London, before departing the city in 1977 – (contemporaneous to the rise of Margaret Thatcher!) to pursue his craft and his studies in America.

Pettet moved into “the poet’s building” on New York’s Lower East Side (where he still resides) and for almost four decades, has been an integral part of the New York art and poetry scene, leading poet John Ashbery to remark that he is “a pillar of the St Mark’s Poetry Project” and “the core of all that is New York about the New York School”. His first, full-length book of poetry, Lyrical Poetry, appeared in 1987

Praise for Simon Pettet

Simon Pettet’s Collected Poems, Hearth, appeared in 2010, and As A Bee appeared recently from Talisman. Talisman also issued his Selected Poems (1995) and More Winnowed Fragments (2006).

Simon compiled and edited James Schuyler’s Selected Art Writings, and co-edited, with James Meetze, Schuyler’s posthumous Other Flowers; published two now legendary collaborations with photographer & filmmaker Rudy Burckhardt, Conversations about Everything and Talking Pictures ; as well as a fine-arts limited edition, Abundant Treasures with painter Duncan Hannah.

Simon Pettet

He was recently awarded (for the second time) a residency by the Emily Harvey Foundation in Venice, Italy, from where he has just returned.

“Like Beethoven’s Bagatelles, Simon Pettet’s short poems have a great deal to say, and their seemingly modest dimensions help rather than hinder his saying it. An unorthodox lucidity reminiscent of Schuyler, a certain English dappleness and an oriental concision blend in poetry whose sweet, complex fragrance is Pettet’s secret” 

John Ashbery