Photo: MACBA Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona from Barcelona, Spain / CC BY-SA 2.0 (source: Wikimedia Commons)
My Take
Kenneth Goldsmith is exactly the sort of provocateur I love to wrestle with. A poet from Freeport, New York, he built his reputation on conceptual writing, retyping and recontextualizing existing text until the very idea of authorship feels destabilized. Founding UbuWeb, that sprawling avant-garde archive, was a gift to anyone curious about the experimental margins, and his reach across music criticism and computer art shows a restless intelligence. He divides readers sharply, and I think that is the point. I am persuaded by artists who force us to ask what language even is. Goldsmith makes boredom into a weapon, and I find that irresistibly clever.
Overview
Kenneth Goldsmith (born 1961) is an American poet and critic. He is the founding editor of UbuWeb and an artist-in-residence at the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing (CPCW) at the University of Pennsylvania, where he teaches. He is also a senior editor of PennSound at the University of Pennsylvania. He hosted a weekly radio show at WFMU from 1995 until June 2010.
Summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
1. Profile
- Name (English)
- Kenneth Goldsmith
- Name (Japanese)
- ケネス・ゴールドスミス
- Reading
- けねす・ごーるどすみす
- Born
- January 1, 1961 (age 65)
- Zodiac / Chinese zodiac
- Capricorn / Ox
- Origin
- Freeport, New York, United States
- Blood type
- Private
- Height
- Private
- Agency
- Private
- Occupation
- poet / university teacher / writer / music critic / computer artist
2. Background
- Elementary school
- Private
- Junior high
- Private
- High school
- Private
- University
- Private
Awards & achievements
- 2020 François Morellet Prize
3. Relationships
- Spouse
- Private
- Children
- Private
- Parents
- Private
- Siblings
- Private
4. Personality
Motto
Private
6. Links
Poet — see all → · University teacher — see all → · More people from United States →
7. About this entry
Tags
- Last updated
- 2026-06-02
Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public items are marked "Private / Unknown". English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.