Adam Cornford


Adam Francis Cornford is a British poet, journalist, and essayist and a great-great-grandson of Charles Darwin. From 1987 to 2008 he led the Poetics Program at New College of California in San Francisco, United States.

Biography

Adam Francis Cornford was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, the son of Christopher Cornford and a lineal descendant of naturalist Charles Darwin. Cornford moved to California, United States in 1969.
He attended the University of California at Santa Cruz, where he studied with kayak editor George Hitchcock; and San Francisco State University, where his mentor was the Greek surrealist Nanos Valaoritis. Among his books are four collections of poetry: Shooting Scripts ; Animations, Decision Forest, and Lalia. For 21 years, Cornford led the Poetics Program at New College of California in San Francisco.
In 2015, Cornford provided the text for a collaboration with Jonathan Gerken and printer and bookmaker Peter Rutledge Koch, Liber Ignis, a serial documentary poem on the history of copper mining and smelting in Butte, Montana that accompanies historical photographs.
Despite this recent shift in his work, Cornford considers himself a neosurrealist and has written and edited on the subject of surrealism. He shares the surrealist view that the true goal of poetry is what the original group around André Breton called "the total liberation of the mind and of all that resembles it". He also has translated poetry by the Surrealist Benjamin Perét and the seminal account by Louis Aragon of the early days of the Surrealist group, "A Wave of Dreams".
From 1987 to 2008, while a core faculty member and program director at New College of California in San Francisco, Cornford worked with Tom Clark, David Meltzer and Gloria Frym to rebuild the graduate Poetics Program. Other notable faculty members during Cornford's tenure included Lyn Hejinian and Juan Felipe Herrera. The innovative program combined a 4-semester core curriculum in the history of English and American poetry from the Renaissance to Modernism with writing seminars, a reading series, and a Visiting Poets program.
As of 2018, Cornford has renewed his association with the cryptographer David Chaum, inventor of digital currency, mix network, multiparty computation, and the "vault" technology underlying blockchain, with whom he has worked as editor/co-writer on numerous projects, including papers for technical journals and Scientific American. Most recently he has collaborated on the documentation and public relations for xx network, which supports the world's first fully private, fully decentralized communications and payment system .
Cornford has published articles about labour movements and political and cultural analyses in Bad Subjects, The Progressive, The Dispatcher and the underground information workers' magazine Processed World, of which he was a co-editor during 1981–1992 as well as a resident graphic artist and cartoonist.
His two longest poems, "Lightning Rod to Storm" in Animations and "The Snarling Gift" in Terminal Velocities are both concerned with popular movements for social and environmental justice. The same is true of the two experimental radio theater works he co-authored with Emmy Award-winning composer Daniel Steven Crafts, Fundamentals and Ad Nauseam. There is a strong continuity between his poetic work and his activism, including his work as author and performer for the satirical antiwar street theatre troupe the John Wayne Peace Institute and his participation in Processed World. His work is discussed in this context in the essay by Andrew Joron, "Neo-Surrealism: Or, The Sun at Night".

Poetry

Collections and longer works

  • Lalia. Chax Press, Tucson, Arizona, 2021
  • Liber Ignis. Peter Koch Printers, Berkeley, California, 2015
  • Decision Forest. Pantograph Press, Berkeley, California, 1997,.
  • 'Round Midnight, Altazor Editions, San Francisco, California, 1989.
  • Animations, City Lights Books, San Francisco, California, 1988,.
  • Shooting Scripts, Black Stone Press, San Francisco, California, 1978,.

    Journals

1969–present.
Poetry and translations have appeared in:
Antaeus, Antenym, Bay Guardian, Beatitude, Caliban, City Lights Review, Compact Bone, Coracle, Gallery Works, Gas, Juxta, Mantis, Malthus, Melodeon, Mike & Dale's Younger Poets, The New College Review, Prosodia, Root & Branch, syllogism, Talisman, Terra, Velocities.
: The Alterran Poetry Assemblage #2, The Alterran Poetry Assemblage #3, , , black fire white fire, Deep Oakland, , , , , , , , , , , MSNBC.com.

Anthologies

  • The Alchemy of Stars: The Rhysling Award Winners Showcase, Science Fiction Poetry Association, US, 2005,.
  • 2001: A Science Fiction Poetry Anthology. Anamnesis Press, Ridgecrest, California, 2001,.
  • The City Lights Pocket Poets Anthology. City Lights Books, San Francisco, California, 1995–1997.
  • Terminal Velocities: An Anthology of Speculative Poetry.. Velocities Publications, Berkeley, California, 1993,.
  • Burning With A Vision: Poetry of Science and the Fantastic. Owlswick Press, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1984,.

    Poetry teaching – children

  • "Eating the Yema of the Sol", ed. and intro., BUSD Publications, Berkeley, California, 1981.
  • "These Words Are My Words," with Robert Glück, eds. and intro.,, Poetry Playhouse, Berkeley, California, 1980.

    Selected essays

  • "Given: An Autobiography" in Linda R. Andres and Marilyn O’Connell Allen, eds., Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series, vol. 28. Gale Research, Inc, Detroit, Michigan, 1997,.
  • "The Pyramid and the Tree" in Cornford, Decision Forest, op. cit..
  • in Bad Subjects No. 33, Race Issue, Berkeley, California, 1997.
  • "Cosmology: Intelligence and Infinity in Language" in Alterran Poetry Assemblage #3, Toronto, Canada, 1996.

    Librettos and other musical texts

  • "Spider Woman" in From a Distant Mesa, an orchestral song cycle on the Southwest's history and culture, with composer Daniel Steven Crafts, 2007.
  • Otter's Odd Adventure, 2001.
  • The Pied Piper of Hamelin, 1992.
  • Ad Nauseam
  • A Soldier's Tale, 1984.
  • Theater of Operations, 1980–81.

    Reviews

  • Andrew Joron, "Neo-Surrealism: Or, The Sun at Night", in the critical anthology The World in Time and Space: Towards a History of Innovative American Poetry in Our Time, 1970–2000, Edward Foster and Joseph Donahue, eds., Talisman House, Jersey City, New Jersey, 2002,.

    Awards

  • National Endowment of the Arts grant for Fundamentals and Ad Nauseam, 1985.
  • Rhysling Award for Best Short Poem, , Science Fiction Poetry Association, 1981.