Barbara Barg


Barbara Barg was a poet, writer, and musician.
Barg was born in Memphis, Tennessee and raised in Forrest City, Arkansas. After studying with poet Ted Berrigan at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago, she moved to New York City and became involved in a number of individual and collaborative projects on the downtown poetry/music scene in the late 1970s-1990s. She performed frequently at venues like The Kitchen, Bowery Ballroom, St Mark's Poetry Project, Bowery Poetry Club, Nuyorican Poets Café, Fez, CBGB, Luna Lounge, Sidewalk Cafe's The Fort, Mercury Lounge, Galapogos, The Sculpture Center, The Open Center, as well as One World Poetry Festival and The International Festival of the Poets. With writer Maggie Dubris she co-founded the all-women cult band "Homer Erotic", which came to life during a lull in poetry readings in the early 90s. The group was composed of seven women interested in music and poetry as performative art forms. She has also performed with Pauline Oliveros, Elliott Sharp, Z'EV, Janene Higgins, Monique Buzzarté and other experimental artists and musicians. Her poetry is attuned to notions of poetic ethnologies, and what she called "voluntary evolution" and "whatever other notion I get in my head". Barg most recently lived in Chicago, and was on faculty at The Chicago School of Poetics, and was writing screenplays for Jump Room Films.

Death

On May 22, 2018, Ellen Floren's official Facebook page revealed in a post that Barg had died. She was 71.

Books

The Origin of THE Species, photograph by Robert Mapplethorpe Obeying the Chemicals with photographs by Nan Goldin

Recordings

Yield Homerica the Beautiful Calling You Home
  • ''Holding Patterns''

Literary Anthologies

Barg's works have appeared in the following literary anthologies.American Poets Say Goodbye to the 20th Century Poems for the Nation: A Collection of Contemporary Political Poems Edited by Allen Ginsberg, Andy Clausen and Eliot KatzAM LIT: Neue Literatur Aus Den USA Edited by Gerard Falkner and Sylvere LotringerOut of This World: The Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery; 1966-1991. Edited by Anne Waldman The L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Book Edited by Charles Bernstein and Bruce Andrews

Audio Anthologies

Barg has contributed to numerous sound art anthologies, including Elliott Sharp's multi-artist compilation CDs State of the Union, Beneath the Valley of the Yahoos, Phone Noir, Late 20th Century Sexual Practices, One World Poetry, and Sugar Alcohol & Meat. Barg's audio work features in three multi-artist compilation cassette tapes: Noise Fest, and twice on Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine .