George Wallace (poet)

Wallace was born into a New York family with associations to both popular entertainment and high culture - his grandfather was a muralist for vaudeville theaters, his father a 'Kiddie Troupe' dancer; and his maternal uncle a world-traveling figure in the Fifth Avenue fashion world. Musically precocious (he was reading music at the age of 4), in the 1960s he was part of the Long Island music scene which produced such artists as The Young Rascals, Billy Joel and the Shangri-Las.

He attended Syracuse University 1967–71, met Allen Ginsberg and studied with W. D. Snodgrass, and then began a twenty-year career exploring the US, Europe and Asia. Occasional work, pursuit of community service, and cross-cultural curiosity resulted in extended stays in Boston (1972–73), India and the Middle East (1973), the San Francisco Bay area (1974–75), Korea (US Peace Corps, 1975–77), North Carolina (1977–1980), Sacramento (1981–83), East Anglia, UK (1983–85), before returning to his native New York.

Beginning in 1988 he began a decade-long career as a community journalist, meanwhile building poetry communities from a base of operations in Huntington, Long Island — creating Walt's Corner, a column in the Long Islander Newspaper (founded by Walt Whitman), Long Island Quarterly Magazine, live performance venues, and local radio and television shows. He co-hosted a radio poetry program, "Poetry Brook".[1] His associations with East End Long Island poetry scene, in particular Westhampton Writers luminaries Budd Schulberg, Peter Swet and Dakin Williams, were supplemented by regular interactions with poets of national and international stature (including Robert Bly, Sharon Olds, Allen Ginsberg, Yevgeny Yevtushenko and Diane Wakoski), who served as Poets In Residence at the Walt Whitman Birthplace.[2]

During this time, Wallace's own poetry began to be collected in chapbook form, with publications through Cross Cultural Communications, Writers Ink Press and others, producing work that featured a growing orientation to inventive and playful monologues.

By the late 1990s Wallace was recognized as a pre-eminent figure in regional poetry, and he was named the first poet laureate for Suffolk County, Long Island, in 2003.[3]

Wallace's engagement in the extended world of Beat and post-Beat writing emerged during this period, simultaneously with his recognition of the opportunity of the Internet for creation of platforms for poetry, and for pan-regional networking of poetry communities.

Poetrybay, which he launched in 2000, established him as a respected national publisher of poetry. The online literary magazine was selected for international archiving and distribution through the Stanford University LOCKSS program.

Meanwhile, from 1999 on, Wallace began to devote more time to poetry and poetry-related activities. In 2000 and 2001, while he was writing exhibitions for a local historical society about Jack Kerouac's residence in Northport Long Island, his associations with the Beat and post-Beat constellation grew dramatically—interacting with such figures as David Amram, Carolyn Cassady, John Cassady, Charles Plymell, Nanos Valariotis, Janine Pommy Vega, Neeli Cherkovski, Jack Foley, Charles Potts, Larry Sawyer, Bob Holman, Steve Dalachinsky, Angelo Verga and Steve Cannon. A four-city marathon reading of Big Sur in 2001 (SF, Northport, Lowell and Orlando, Florida) brought a national spotlight to his work, solidified by his appearances at events and venues like Lowell Celebrates Kerouac, Insomniacathon, Orlando's Kerouac House, Bradstock, Lyric Recovery and Howlfest.

During this period, he began to appear regularly at venues in lower Manhattan, in particular at Bowery Poetry Club, Cornelia Street Café and Gathering of the Tribes Gallery. He has also appeared at special poetry programming at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Frequent appearances followed in Lowell, Woodstock and the Hudson Valley of New York, and Wallace established strong connections to writing communities from Florida to Southern California, and from Cleveland and Kansas City to San Antonio, Tx and OKC Oklahoma.

Since 2005 Wallace has solidified his role as a performance poet, poetry organizer and promoter of imagination based poetry at workshops and lecture venues worldwide. His collaborations and appearances with prominent figures in the poetry and performance world are many, including music (Donovan, Thurston Moore, Joan Baez, Levon Helm, Maddy Prior, Leonard Lehrman, Philip Dragoumis, Jorn Swart), theater (Viveca Lindfors, Jean Boissery, Catherine Sorba), and visual arts (Peter Max).

Participation in a low residency MFA program with Pacific University in Oregon brought him the mentorship and support of Marvin Bell, David St John, and a position as a university lecturer at Pace University in lower Manhattan.

His poetry was the subject of critical commentary by Hugh Fox, Jack Foley, Lenny Dellarocca, Robert Peake, Kirpal Gordon, John Amen, Doug Holder, Nancy Henry and others. He was profiled in Greenwich Village Gazette, Cafe Review, Newsday and The New York Times. Dozens of chapbooks of his poems, increasingly performance oriented, were published during this period, among them books that were released by Green Panda, Blue Lights Press, NightBallet Press, Three Rooms Press, La Finestra Editrice.

During this period, Wallace became writer in residence at the Walt Whitman Birthplace, and his reach as an organizer of events and activities in poetry expanded dramatically. Downtown New York City poetry associations have grown, including Jane Ormerod (Great Weather for Media) and Kat Georges and Peter Carlaftes (Three Rooms Press); and interaction with national and international figures in poetry, including William Stafford, Naomi Shihab Nye, Martin Espada, and Cornelius Eady. With Oklahoma poet laureate Carol Hamilton, Wallace conceived the Woody Guthrie Poets, which beginning in 2004 organized an annual poetry reading at the July Woodyfest in Okemah Oklahoma. He began participating in communal poetry events in Cleveland and in Northampton, Massachusetts, through Bree Bodner of Green Panda Press. Through association with Alexsey Dayen in New York City, he edited a novel manuscript by No!Artist Boris Lurie and developed a friendship with filmographer Aldo Tambellini. Through association with Herbert Kuhner in Vienna, he edited the poetry of Alter Brody.[4]

His international profile began to emerge during this time as well. His writing came to the attention of La Finestra Editrice, in Trento. Italy, which translated and published two collections of his poetry. He appeared for workshops and readings in Rome, Paris, Belfast and in Greece. An appearance in the Lake District of England for Words By Water resulted in an extended relationship with UK poetry, principally through association with Cumbrian poet and organizer Geraldine Green. In the UK, chapbooks have been published with Troubadour Books and Flarestack, a CD with Tony Lamb; and he began regular tours of England — in particular Liverpool, Manchester, Cornwall and particularly such Cumbrian towns as Keswick, Kendal, Penrith, Carlisle and Ulverston.

His work was recognized by the Beat Museum in San Francisco, Lowell Celebrates Kerouac, and Incwriters in the UK, and is archived in the Special Collections archives of Hofstra University. During a decade of international travel, he has appeared at the Ledbury Poetry Festival, Avignon Festival, Robbie Burns Centre, Dylan Thomas Centre, John Steinbeck Center and Gordon Parks Museum; and he was honored with top literary prizes at numerous festivals (Ditet e Naimit, Tetova No Macedonia; Orpheus Festival, Plovdiv Bulgaria; Korca Poetry Festival, Korca Albania). He was the first American recipient of the Alexander Medal, awarded by UNESCO/Piraeus, Greece.

An appearance with rock musician Donovan at the Sappho Festival in Washington DC led to a series of residencies by Wallac at Harvard University's Center for Hellenic Studies, during which time he conducted an extensive exploration into Hellenic and southeastern Mediterranean cultures that added new dimension to his work.

Wallace was also featured in Leisurama,[5] a documentary film about the 1960s vacation housing development in Montauk, New York. The film was first broadcast on New York's public television station WNET in 2005 and later went into national public television broadcast distribution in 2008.

• Newsday, "Suffolk Names First Poet Laureate"
• About.com, "Poetry Comes To Guthrie Festival"
• Greenwich Village Gazette, "Wallace Tours"
• "Our Man In Vienna" on "Alter Brody"