Verbatim Text Sound Expo was conceived during the first year of the pandemic, with the intention of bringing together local small presses and record labels in an outdoor space to learn about each others’ work and trade books and tapes. Since then, it has grown into an annual day-long market and performance festival featuring Hudson Valley & Catskills-based small presses and record labels. The market is accompanied by a schedule of performance across disciplines: poetry, avant-garde music, sound art, and hybrid text-sound experiments. It is a gathering of poets, soundmakers, fabulists, singers, and sprechstimmers, moving between & across domains of text and noise.

All Verbatim performances are curated by the presses and labels. If you are a small press poetry publisher or a record label that focuses on experimental sound, and you are based in the Hudson Valley, Catskills, Capital Region, Western Mass, or nearby areas, please contact pinsapocollective@gmail.com if you're interested in becoming a vendor. We have limited capacity so participation isn't guaranteed. We're no longer adding new vendors to the 2025 lineup.

Verbatim is now in its 5th year, and will be held this October 4th at the beautiful Sugar Maples Center for Creative Arts in the Northern Catskills. Local food and drink purveyors will keep you all nourished, and WGXC 90.7 will broadcast live from the stage for those who can't attend in person. Come to experience out-there literary and sound experiments emerging from the Hudson Valley, Catskills, Western MA, and Western NY.

VERBATIM TEXT SOUND EXPO V

OCTOBER 4TH, 2025

SUGAR MAPLES CENTER FOR CREATIVE ARTS

35 BIG HOLLOW ROAD

MAPLECREST, NEW YORK

MARKET: 11:30am-5:30pm

PERFORMANCES: 12:30am-9:30pm

This project is made possible with funds from the Statewide Community Regrants Program, a regrant program of the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature and administered by CREATE Council on the Arts.

Pinsapo