Hedwig Gorski (born Trenton, New Jersey, July 18, 1949 - ) is an American performance poet and an avant-garde artist. She describes her ethnic background as first-generation Polish-American, a distinct cultural group that is among what she calls the "invisible European minorities" in the United States. She coined the term "Performance Poetry" in the early 1980s while writing the "Litera" column for the Austin Chronicle in an effort to distinguish her performed poetry from performance art (The Austin Chronicle). She was also one of the founding writers on the Austin Chronicle, which helped to promote the vibrant music capital of the world that the capital of Texas had become. Along with the growth of the music scene, a multi-ethnic theater, literature, and art community began to coalesce during the 1970s. This is the environment from which Gorski’s work grew from its mysterious underground, a "pedestrian avant-garde" (Afterward. Intoxication: Heathcliff on Powell Street, College Station: Slough Press, 2006. pg. 82.).

A favorite on several KUT-FM radio programs, her live broadcast performances with the East of Eden Band were recorded and distributed to radio stations around the world. They became part of the 1980s independent audio cassette/radio station network which offered radical or innovative music and sound art during the Reagan-Bush years (Sound Choice Magazine, 1986).

The East of Eden Band, formed of professional jazz musicians, was successful because the music and poetry were melded together exclusively for performance. Gorski’s spoken vocals have been described as bringing her eerie voicing as close to singing as possible without actually singing. The compositions ranged from jazz to country and western to rock and roll, with the crucial factor being a match of sound to each narrative poem’s meaning. She was directly influenced by Allen Ginsberg, who jeered one of her early readings at the Naropa University during the Jack Kerouac Disembodied Poetics Conference in the 1980s, (as witnessed by Dr. Mark Christal, Smithsonian Institute). Later, her composer husband, D’Jalma Garnier, accompanied Ginsberg at an Austin Liberty Lunch reading, where other Beat poets such as Gregory Corso, Bob Micheline, Gary Snyder, Peter Orlovsky, and Andy Clausen read at times. Snyder called Gorski's poems "surreal," and Corso called her his "big Texas girl" even though she is from New Jersey.

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