Allen Ginsberg & William S. Burroughs — Poetry Center Reading Broadside Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
Early event broadside announcing a Poetry Center reading by Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs, presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.
Posters such as this one survive today largely because of the efforts of Mark Perlberg, a founding board member of the Poetry Center of Chicago and an important figure in the organization’s early years. Perlberg carefully preserved many of the Poetry Center’s early event posters and broadsides in his personal archive.
Years later, Perlberg transferred these materials to KC Clarke. When Clarke secured the Poetry Center’s institutional archive at the University of Chicago Library’s Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, copies of these early broadsides were included in the collection, ensuring their preservation and availability for future researchers.
Without Perlberg’s foresight in preserving these materials, many of the Poetry Center’s earliest printed records would likely have been lost.
Perlberg was himself a published poet as well as an early steward of the organization’s history. In many ways he served as the Poetry Center’s first informal archivist.
From the KC Clarke collection. Related materials are preserved in the Poetry Center archive at the University of Chicago Library.
