With influences ranging from John Cage and Andy Warhol to contemporary hip-hop and internet artists, Kenneth Goldsmith has pushed the limits of late twentieth-century poetics to both reinvigorate and pioneer aspects of visual poetry, sound poetry, the list poem, and digital poetics. Goldsmith is the author of ten books of poetry, founding editor of the online archive UbuWeb (ubu.com), and the editor of I’ll Be Your Mirror: The Selected Andy Warhol Interviews. As a collector, compiler, composer, and arranger of everyday speech and the discourse of common culture, Goldsmith makes readers aware of the linguistic matter all around us, and the potential for it to be materialized.

Goldsmith’s UbuWeb is one of the primary resources for Brion Gysin’s work, particularly audio recordings. Gysin’s infamous remark that “writing is fifty years behind painting” is an often-referenced call to arms for Goldsmith.