Barbara Barg (April 29, 1947 — May 22, 2018) was a poet, writer, and musician.
Barg was born in Memphis, Tennessee and raised in Forrest City, Arkansas. After studying with poet Ted Berrigan at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago, she moved to New York City and became involved in a number of individual and collaborative no wave projects on the downtown poetry/music scene in the late 1970s-1990s. She performed frequently at venues like The Kitchen, Bowery Ballroom, St Mark's Poetry Project, Bowery Poetry Club, Nuyorican Poets Café, Fez, CBGB, Luna Lounge, Sidewalk Cafe's The Fort, Mercury Lounge, Galapogos, The SculptureCenter, The Open Center, as well as One World Poetry Festival (Amsterdam) and The International Festival of the Poets (Rome). With writer Maggie Dubris she co-founded the all-women cult band Homer Erotic (1991 to 2000), which came to life during a lull in poetry readings in the early 90s. The Homer Erotic group was composed of seven women, all interested in music and poetry as a performance art form.
Barg also performed with Pauline Oliveros, Elliott Sharp, Z'EV, Janene Higgins, Monique Buzzarté and other experimental artists and musicians.
Her poetry is attuned to notions of poetic ethnologies, and what she called "voluntary evolution" ("evolution for the hell of it") and "whatever other notion I get in my head".
Until her death On May 22, 2018, She was 71. Barg lived in Chicago and was on faculty at The Chicago School of Poetics, that was founded by poet Francesco Levato in 2011 to teach and practice experimental poetics. Barg was also writing screenplays for Jump Room Films.
