Contributor Data Visualization
The Minds Behind Mother
Founded by Peter Schjeldahl and Jeff Giles at Carleton College in Minnesota, Mother is an important component and representation of the New York School poets. After Schjeldahl moved to New York, the city became the official publishing address of Mother. Schjeldahl introduced the pages of the magazine to the Tulsa group centered on Ted Berrigan who became an essential contributor to the magazine. While Schjeldahl spent time in Europe during 1964-65, he was replaced as coeditor by another Carleton student, David Moberg, for issues 3–5 of the magazine. Other important figures that greatly contributed were Joe Brainard who supplied covers for issues 3 and 5, and Berrigan, Ron Padgett, Dick Gallup, Kenward Elmslie, Joseph Ceravolo, David Shapiro, Tony Towle, —as well as Schjeldahl— who all contributed to writing.
One of the most notable publications in Mother (number 6) was a hoax by Berrigan where he lifted excerpts from various interviews and presented the combined results as his interview with John Cage. When this interview was chosen for a monetary award and publication in The American Literary Anthology, Berrigan had to reveal his fabrication to editor George Plimpton who allowed the publication with the addition of an explanatory note.
As Schjeldahl became increasingly involved in writing art criticism, he withdrew from editing Mother. Therefore, the final issues were edited by contributors MacAdams and Duncan McNaugton. The last print-formatted issue - issue number 8 - was published from Buffalo, New York by McNaugton. McNaugton later founded a new magazine titled Fathar (1970–75), as the successor to Mother.
The art world during the 60s was very male-dominated. With the help of the mimeograph revolution, female writers and artists put their foot in the door of the arts by being the editors, coeditors, and producers of poetry magazines. Before, women in these spaces were “muses and appreciators or fillers of coffee cups”. Although they were sadly only able to be a part of this due to the mere fact that “editing a mimeo was all too conventionally coded as feminine labor”, the Mimeograph Revolution gave women “new opportunities for their voices to engage in conversation with the modernist world at large”, as claimed by Rona Cran in Space Occupied: Women Poet– Editors and the Mimeograph Revolution in Mid-century New York City.