A Place for Poetry – Three Modern Voices

The Golda Foundation is proud to present A Place for Poetry — Three Modern Voices with:

Edgar Oliver first started performing in New York City at the Pyramid Club in the mid-1980s. Notable New York City productions include his roles in Edward II with Cliplight Theater and numerous productions at the Axis Theatre Company, including A Glance at New York (which played at the Edinburgh Festival) and his autobiographical one-man show East 10th Street: Self Portrait With Empty House, which enjoyed an extended run with Axis.

His film credits include the Independent Spirit Award-winning The Jimmy Show and the multi-award-winning Henry May Long. He appeared in the Jared Hess film Gentlemen Broncos and had the leading role as a Futurist performance artist in the comedy feature That’s Beautiful Frank.   He is also a frequent storyteller for The Moth radio program.

Oliver has written at least a dozen plays, “including The Poetry Killers, The Ghost of Brooklyn, When She Had Blood Lust, The Master of Monstrosity; I Am A Coffin, My Green Hades, and Chop Off Your Ear.”  These have often been produced at La MaMa ETC.

Oliver has published two poetry collections: A Portrait of New York by a Wanderer There, Summer, and the novel The Man Who Loved Plants. His style has been characterized as “characterized as 19th Century romantic”. 

Oliver also gained cult fame appearing on the Science Channel series Oddities. He was notable for his line, “Is that a straitjacket?”, which was featured in the show’s promos. He hosts the spin-off show Odd Folks Home.

On November 26, 2011, Third Man Records released a tricolor 45 RPM single of his “In The Park”. Only 150 copies were produced. Fifty were sold at Third Man Records in Nashville, Tennessee, and fifty at Obscura in New York. Fifty copies were mailed randomly to those who ordered the unlimited black vinyl version. His show East 10th Street: Self Portrait With Empty House won a Fringe First Award in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 2009.

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Theodore Schroetter. Native New Yorker; graduated Princeton summa cum laude; wrote my first poem there (pure inspiration – the words suddenly ran into my head). Further schooling at Yale; U.C., Berkeley; and the Univ. of Grenoble, in France.   In Berkeley, in the 1960’s (“Peace-and-Love” generation; Bob Dylan; folk music; “Sex, Drugs, and Rock-and-Roll”; etc.). Was considered the chief anti-Vietnam-War poet, and, basically, chief poet (out of many), on the basis of my readings at open-poetry readings. Then moved to Greenwich Village, where I lived for 19 years; now back in Jackson Hts., where I grew up.

I have never sent a poem to a poetry magazine, as that usually ends in rejection slips, and I am absolutely not the competitive type. My good friend, the great poet and story writer, Mel C. Thompson, published a book of my poems on the Internet, as he could see I was never going to do anything: Off the Knife. I supposedly have genius-level I.Q., but, when it comes to physical things, the only thing I know how to do is change a light bulb. I will probably be remembered – if at all – as a minor poet of our time. That would please me. 

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Ron Riddell is a New Zealand poet, musician and writer with a deep commitment to ecology, on all possible levels: natural, social-temporal, philosophic and spiritual. He believes and works in the spirit of the transformative power of poetry and all creative human expression. At present, he divides his time between New Zealand and Colombia. When he can manage it, he takes trips to Europe to visit friends and family, including his three granddaughters, who live in Sweden. His work has been translated into a dozen languages. Recently, his poems have featured in several large international anthologies, in Kenya, Bangladesh, Japan and Nepal. His latest book, a collection of poems entitled Awakening to Timelessness was published in 2024. 

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The Golda Foundation will soon publish three original plays by Edgar Oliver.