A Life’s Work in Boxes: Poet Perspectives on Archival Collecting and Research
Thursday, April 9, 2026 from 1:00 PM – 2:30 PM Join poet Ken Mikolowski for a discussion on The Alternative Press with author Rebecca Kosick who will present a lecture on the making of her book: Dispatches From the Avant-Garage: The Alternative Press (Wayne State University Press) at the Hatcher Gallery Event Space in the Hatcher Library North, First Floor, Room 100. The event is free and sponsored by the U-M Library and Residential College. Books will be available for purchase from Book Beat.
Poet and scholar Rebecca Kosick, once a student of The Alternative Press co-founder Ken Mikolowski in the U-M Residential College, recently completed Dispataches: From the Avant-Garage: The Alternative Press . Kosick will discuss her experience working with the archive from a research perspective. Then, Detroit poet Mïïgun will join to moderate a conversation between Kosick and Mikolowski, illuminating their varied perspectives on the work of The Alternative Press and its subsequent life as archival material.
In 1969 poet and artist couple Ken and Ann Mikolowski began The Alternative Press in the basement of their home on an old letterpress the bought from the Detroit Artists’ Workshop. Poets and artists who published original works with them were; Glen Baxter, Diane DiPrima, Allen Ginsburg, Gary Snyder, Ted Berrigan, Alice Notley, Robert Creely, Brad Iverson, Tom Clark, Bern Porter, Robert Creely, Brenda Goodman, Helen Adam, Gordon Newton, Charles Bukowski, Kofi Natambu, Ed Sanders, Robert Bly, Jim Gustafson, Cay Bahnmiller, John Sinclair, Joe Brainard, Anne Waldman, Ray Johnson, Chris Tysh, Bradley Jones and many others. For thirty years they collected poetry and art from their friends and wider circle, and distributed these creations in manila envelopes through the mail. The archive of their life’s-work-worth of material is now held at the University of Michigan Library’s Special Collections Research Center.
“What is remarkable about the archives, is that we see not only the finished products of the artists’ work, but we see how a poem gets written, a work of art gets created, and how they both get published and distributed. We can see a poem by Gary Snyder as it was first submitted. Next we can see how Ken and Ann printed it in a couple of different ways, and then how Snyder revised the printing, and finally how it appeared in its finished form.”
— Kathleen Dow, Curator from the University of Michigan’s Alternative Press Symposium
Ken and Ann Mikolowski with their hitchhikers, photo by Jim Pallas.
Rebecca Kosick is Associate Professor of Comparative Poetry and Poetics in the School of Modern Languages at the University of Bristol where she also co-directs the Bristol Poetry Institute. She has a PhD in Comparative Literature from Cornell University.
Rebecca is the author of Labor Day (Golias Books 2020) and Material Poetics in Hemispheric America: Words and Objects, 1950-2010 (Edinburgh University Press 2020) as well as editor-translator of Hélio Oiticica: Secret Poetics (Soberscove and Winter Editions 2023). Her new book, Dispatches from the Avant-Garage: The Alternative Press is from Wayne State University Press (2026). She has also published numerous articles, essays, and other fragments that address, translate, or are themselves poetry. She grew up in Michigan, occupied Potawatomi lands.
Ken Mikolowski is the author of five books of poetry. He is a retired professor from the Residential College of The University of Michigan. For over thirty years he ran The Alternative Press as editor, publisher and printer. An overview of the press’s history can be read at: The Poetry Foundation.
Mïïgun is a Detroit-based multidisciplinary artist, writer, curator, and editor known for work spanning film,, assemblage, and public installation. They collaborate on creative projects, such as music videos for Ritual Howls, and participate in literary events, including discussions with authors like Lauren Haddad.