[1] He moved to New York City in 1971[2] and soon after enrolled in one of Bernadette Mayer's workshops at the Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church-in-the-Bowery.
[1] Friedman then "invented performance poetry" when he began to oversee the Project's Monday night readings series during the period 1974 to 1976.
[1][3] Friedman has given readings and performances at the Museum of Modern Art, The Kitchen, and The Public Theater, among other venues.
[4] He has collaborated with visual artist Robert Kushner – whose hat designs worn by models descending a spiral staircase were accompanied by Friedman's poetry, published in The New York Hat Line (1979), and who designed the settings for Friedman's 1982 play The White Snake[1] – and Kim MacConnel – on several projects about learning a new language (Lingomats, 1980) and an illustrated phrasebook (La Frontera, 1983).
The Telephone Book consists of transcripts of Friedman's phone calls throughout a number of weeks, and Space Stations – which has not been published in its entirety, follows up on William S. Burroughs by dividing a journal's pages into three columns and recording Firedman's attention shifts while he is writing.