Janet Hamill (born July 29, 1945 in Jersey City, NJ) is an American poet and spoken word artist. Her poem "K-E-R-O-U-A-C" was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and her fifth collection, "Body of Water [1] ," was nominated for the William Carlos Williams Award by the Poetry Society of America.
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Born in Christ Hospital in Jersey City, Hamill spent her first five years gazing across the Hudson River from the Palisades in Weehawken NJ. In 1950, her family moved further north to New Milford, NJ in Bergen County. In 1963, she attended Glassboro State College (now Rowan University) in south Jersey, where she earned a BA in English in 1967. At Glassboro, Hamill met life-long friend and collaborator, musician and poet Patti Smith. Both were considered campus outcasts and beatniks. They bonded over art and rock 'n roll on the staff of the Avant, the campus literary magazine, and backstage at the campus theatre where they were both active. After graduation, Janet and Patti made their way to New York City,[2]where they found their first apartments near Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. Patti moved in with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, and Janet lived a few blocks away. In 1968, Janet moved to the lower east side, where she briefly shared an apartment with Patti. For the next 25 years, lower Manhattan was Janet's home. With New York City as her base, she interweaved jobs in bookstores with travels across the United States and down into Mexico. She took a freighter across the Atlantic and travelled through southern Europe, Morocco, Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Tanzania [3]. Upon her return in 1975, Hamill published her first book Troublante and became an active member of the downtown literary community. She read frequently at venues such as the Poetry Project at St. Mark's. She wrote, directed, and acted in Bob Holman's Poet's Theatre and performed with new wave musician Adele Bertei (The Contortions) at the Mudd Club.
A strong proponent of the spoken word, Janet has read widely at such well known venues as The Poetry Project at St. Marks Church, The People’s Poetry Gathering[4], The Walt Whitman Cultural Center, the WORD Festival, the Bowery Poetry Club, the Knitting Factory, CBGB’s Gallery, the Nuyorican Poets Café, Central Park Summer Stage[5], Lowell Celebrates Kerouac [6], the Andy Warhol Museum, Seattle’s Bumbershoot Festival, Rubin Museum of Art, Cathedral of St. John the Divine, the Liss Ard Festival in County Cork, Ireland, Patti Smith’s Meltdown Festival[7] in London, the Latitude Festival in Southwold, England, and Liverpool’s Heartbeats series.
Hamill has released two CDs of spoken word and music in collaboration with the band Moving Star (bassist Bob Torsello, guitarist Jay LoRubbio (Torsello and LoRubbio are members of the band Shrubs) and percussionist Greg Feller). Hamill was signed to Mouth Almighty Records;a subsidiary of Mercury Records. However, no recordings were released on that label. Flying Nowhere, released by NOT Records in 2000, was produced by Lenny Kaye and executive produced by Bob Holman; the CD featured performances by Lenny Kaye and Patti Smith. Genie of the Alphabet (NOT Records 2005)[8], produced by Janet Hamill and Bob Torsello, featured cameos by Beat legend David Amram, Bob Holman, Lenny Kaye, and Patti Smith. Moving Star, now reconfigured as Lost Ceilings with new guitarist Mark McNutt, had their debut performance on New Year's Day 2011 at St. Mark's Church. They performed Hamill's poem "Green Tara as Protector of the Eight Fears."
On February 9, 2011, Hamill opened for Patti Smith and Lenny Kaye at St. Mark's Church to celebrate the 40th anniversary of their first performance together.[9]
Hamill presently resides in New York's lower Hudson Valley with her husband, writer and musician Joseph Csida. She is an instructor and member of the board of advisors at The North East Poetry Center's College of Poetry, in Warwick, NY. [10] She is also a member of the Seligmann Foundation in Sugar Loaf NY, an organization located at the estate of Surrealist painter Kurt Seligmann, dedicated to his ongoing legacy and the legacy of Surrealism.