The connection between Tulsa and the Lower East Side isn’t as distant as you think: in the early ’60s a group of artists and writers who first met in Tulsa – including Ted Berrigan, Joe Brainard and Ron Padgett – arrived in the East Village and grew to occupy a prominent place in the burgeoning writing scene.

Tonight at 8 p.m., the St Marks Poetry Project celebrates the Library of America’s publication of “The Collected Writings of Joe Brainard” with a reading and reception. Brainard wasn’t just a writer: his prodigious creative output included paintings, collages, assemblages, and designs of sets and costumes for theater. His witty use of comics in his work mirrored developments by Pop artists of the period.

Tonight’s readers will include Ron Padgett, Michael Lally, Larry Fagin, Ann Waldman, and Edmund White, as well as Thurston Moore, who, incidentally, will return to the Poetry Project on May 4 for a benefit performance with neighborhood fixture John Zorn.