AUTOBIO RE:GRAPHY
Michael Peters is the author of Vaast Bin (Calamari Press, 2007) and other assorted sound, visual, and text-based works. As certain as he is uncertain of access to “the real,” Peters explores this periphery in old and new media, utilizing sound-imaging strategies as something like a poet, visual poet, sound poet, musician, fiction-writer, essayist, ecologist, ethical topologist, and a sound environment programmer. Peters was awarded an obscure poetry prize by the Academy of American Poets some time ago, but was immediately released back into the wild without being tagged. In addition to numerous print and online journals, his works are scattered in special collections like The Sackner Archive, The Ohio State University and the University at Buffalo’s avant-garde libraries, as well as private collections. It appears in both poetry and visual poetry anthologies like The Last Vispo Anthology (Fantagraphics, 2012) and Resist Much/Obey Little (Spuyten Duyvil, 2017). While his visual work has appeared in nearly 20 group exhibitions, a solo show of new visual work—O Kind Vel’d Sparrow (A Sound-Imaging Installation)—took place in October of 2022 at the CANO Gallery in Oneonta, New York.
“Michael Peters speaks Yeti.”
Although his work extends from text to explorations of static and kinetic visual poetry, his combinatory multidisciplinary approach not only features cross-pollinations of text and image, but sound. This includes solo work as well as experimental performances in collaboration with Sandra Gardner, Al Margolis, Area C, and Jack Wright, among many others. Peters is also a founding member of the Be Blank Consort. Example venues for his text-based readings and experimental performances include The Poetry Project at St. Marks, The Bowery Poetry Club, Issue Project Room, and the Zinc Bar in New York City, as well as The Boston Poetry Marathon, SUNY Albany’s Art Museum, Round Lake Auditorium, and the MCA in Chicago. Peters cut his sound teeth as a member of the musical group Poem Rocket, and is a label-mate of Sun Ra on Atavistic Records, the Chicago-based avant jazz and rock label. A “lost” Poem Rocket EP from 1999 has been scheduled for release sometime in 2024 on San Diego’s Silver Girl Records.
“Unfortunately, many who write in the more usual ways feel that “otherwise” works are attacks upon them and their own works. Those who strongly favor the co-existence of both usual and “otherwise” works get it from both sides.”