The Organism for Poetic Research (OPR) is an experimental critical-poetic entity, a vehicle and platform for the performance of research in poetics and poetic research. The OPR is enlivened by its many members and contributors operating in diverse locations with current centralization in cities such as Brooklyn, Vancouver, B.C., and Portland, Oregon. Propelled by poesis (making) as its investigative method, the OPR initiates events that open a field of relations between the natural sciences, artistic practices, and research in the humanities. The OPR appropriates and refashions diverse modes and objects of inquiry as instruments in a series of specific provocations that produce PELTs: the Organism’s epidermal organ—a diffuse, reticular interface with the world. OPR projects take a number of forms: In addition to hosting events throughout the year, the OPR produces the annual magazine, Pelt, and its webPELT. The OPR also produces “occasional” publications and projects called “OPR Editions” and hosts web residents whose projects actively investigate and re-describe the boundaries of poetic and artistic forms and disciplinary formations of knowledge. The OPR “Library” and “Index” (online) function as repositories for images, materials, and projects—documents and documented things—that influence the OPR’s activities and development. We welcome you explore the website and to write us at organism [at] organismforpoeticresearch [dot] org.
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The OPR would like to thank the Department of English at New York University for its generous support, with additional thanks to Dr. Lytle Shaw and Dr. Una Chaudhuri for their involvement and for their contributions to the continuing development of the OPR. Thanks to Shumeng Ye for web development and design consultation, to Garth Swanson for photography from INDEX, and to all our contributors and readers. Wilson, Ada Smailbegovic, and Daniel C.
