Join us Sunday, March 22 at Book Beat from 3-5 PM for a double book launch with local poets Ken Mikolowski & M.L. Liebler.
We will discuss and present Dispatches from the Avant-Garage the first major monograph on Mikolowski’s ground-breaking Alternative Press and Liebler’s autobiography Hound Dog: A Poet’s Memoir of Rock, Revolution, and Redemption. Both poets are pillars of the local art scene and we are honored to have them both here to discuss their work and its impact on Detroit and beyond.
Don’t miss this rare opportunity to hear firsthand about the energy, risk-taking, and community that fueled Detroit’s literary underground—and continues to influence independent publishing today.
Dispatches from the Avant-Garage: The Alternative Press by Rebecca Kosick chronicles the history of the Alternative Press, a Detroit-based mail-art and poetry press founded by Ken and Ann Mikolowski in 1969, known for its finely designed counterculture publications in the form of letterpress postcards, broadsides, flyers, bumper stickers, and books featuring major avant-garde writers and artists. This long awaited book, published by Wayne State University Press, details the press’s origins, its role in the national avant-garde scene, and its impact on art and politics, featuring over 100 images of its unique publications.
Signed copies of Dispatches from the Avant-Garage: The Alternative Press (WSU Press) can be ordered in advance at the Book Beat gallery.
Hound Dog is a wide-ranging memoir from Detroit poet M.L. Liebler that reads like an album of a life lived with music, community, and art at its core. Through stories of music and activism, friendships with fellow artists, and reflections on more than fifty years of writing, Liebler traces a path that connects family, faith, and the creative forces that have shaped his work. The book is driven with the rhythms of the counterculture—from Elvis and Dylan to Detroit’s own vibrant scenes—while centering the human experiences that make music and words matter.
Signed copies of Hound Dog: A Poet’s Memoir of Rock, Revolution, and Redemption can also be pre-ordered in advance from the Book Beat gallery.
M. L. LIEBLER is a Detroit-born poet, editor, professor, and longtime literary arts organizer whose work has helped define the city’s independent publishing and performance scene. He has taught English and creative writing at Wayne State University since 1980 and is the author and editor of more than a dozen books of poetry, essays, and anthologies. Liebler has received numerous awards for his writing and community work, and his commitment to small press culture and literary activism has made him a central figure in Midwest letters.
KEN MIKOLOWSKI is the author of four books of poetry and a retired professor of poetry at The University of Michigan. For over thirty years Ken and his wife Ann co-ran The Alternative Press as editor, publisher, art designer, and printer. An overview of the press’s history can be read at: D.I.Y. Detroit at The Poetry Foundation.
In 2007, Book Beat posted a short feature on The Alternative Press.