Happy birthday, Anne Waldman!
Anne Waldman’s New York – New Jersey upbringing and connection to Greece is the opposite of mine. She was born in A Millville, New Jersey, on April 2, 1945, and grew up on MacDougal Street in New York City, while I was born in New York City and grew up in New Jersey. Likewise, it was her mother who moved to Greece for a few years, while it was my father who was from Greece. These connections and opposites don’t really mean anything, but a few years ago I did run into her at a party.
Anne Waldman is an impressive woman. Here’s a little bit of her bio from Poets.org:
She received her BA from Bennington College in 1966. From 1966 until 1978 she ran the St. Mark’s Poetry Project, reading with fellow poets such as Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso. Immediately following her departure from St. Mark’s, she and Ginsberg founded the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado.
She has published over forty books of poetry….
…Waldman has received numerous awards and honors for her poetry, including The Dylan Thomas Memorial Award, The Poets Foundation Award, The National Literary Anthology Award, and The Shelley Memorial Award for poetry. She has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts. She is a two-time winner of the International Poetry Championship Bout in Taos, New Mexico. She was elected an Academy Chancellor in 2011.
Stephanie Nikolopoulos 
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