How
did you first come to visual poetry? What is it about the form that resonates?
I may have been doing visual poetry before I knew I was, just as I didn’t know I was a geographer until I went to a cross disciplinary conference organized between a geography and a literature department in the UK in 2007. It isn’t surprising; I’ve never liked boxes or definitions, and tend toward multi- (or inter-)disciplinarity. When I was actively painting, I layered in texts to ‘trouble’ landscape painting; although I would never have defined it as visual poetry.
I worked for many years as a curator of land-based installation works (including with Elemental Festival, which I founded in 2006); my interest in installation-based practices and my geographical training have influenced my installation-based visual poems.
As a geographer, I am interested in how visual poetry can consider the spatial. In most of my work, I attempt to engage with the multi-directional process of an ecosystem, through/with the visual, and the bodily, along with consideration of the historical, colonial, and social that construct landscapes. I’m attracted to how visual poetry touches upon the spatial, hints at the non-linear, and the still-in-the-making, and allows me to cross between forms.
How does your visual work interact with your writing?
I am a visual thinker; this sensibility to the visual makes its way into my writing. As a geographer trained to do field research, I have used fieldbooks for many years; I use writing and sketching as forms of ‘thinking through’, observation, and research. My fieldbooks integrate writing, poetry, and visual notes; I have a hard time thinking in a single form. There has been a poetic turn in geography with some interesting work being done to open up research to creative methodologies and academic writing that is attuned to language and poetry, and I've been engaging in those conversations.
Ecosystems are multi-sensory, non-linear, and multi-directional. Visual poetry engages the visual and to some extent the spatial, but I am also interested in the tactile, the audial, the process, and want to move beyond the limits of the page. In response, some of my visual poetry is installed on-site, and invites/participates in the changes, influences and processes of the ecosystem. My installed work also integrates letters/words, and therefore questions the limits of language and ‘author’. Sometimes I document these works, sometimes not; so there are poems that no one sees at all in photographic form or otherwise, unless they happen upon them while walking off trail.
How does a poem begin?
I walk. I often see a visual ‘poem’ or installation before I have words. I struggle to find the language. In response, I have created some works that are installed and invite the ecosystem to ‘write’. I thought I might then create the poem from these influences, but have found that the photographs of the installed work changing over time is the poem, somehow. Some poems come from following lines or traces in the bush and I translate them. Sometimes they are more researched or structured, or I work from found materials (archival, cultural etc.). It’s really an experiment.
Have you a daily schedule by which you work, or are you working to fit this in between other activities?
I don’t currently have a daily writing schedule, although I am certainly more productive (and I find the writing is better) when I do. When I am able to be more structured, I still fit the writing in around the rest of life (work, family responsibilities and so on). My best ‘fitted in’ writing schedule is to write for an hour in the morning before work, then for a couple of hours on the weekend. I read a lot, and do a lot of thinking about my writing throughout the rest of the week. Walking is often a way for me to write in my head; these activities are part of my writing practice. It would be a luxury - and I think quite productive - to have extended blocks for writing and thinking. I’m extremely grateful to have recently received a Canada Council for the Arts writing grant. It will give me two months of writing time this winter.
What are your favourite print or online literary journals?
I read Brick and The New Quarterly regularly, as well as Arc magazine. Wish I could buy more subscriptions, or that our tiny local library carried literary journals! I dip into a number of online journals as often as I can: Train, Bomb; I like h& for the visual works; Rob McLennan’s My (small) press writing day is great to get a glimpse of writers’ lives; Touch the Donkey.
Who are some of the writers you are reading lately that most excite you?
I have read and re-visited all these in the last few weeks: Eve Joseph’s Quarrels; Trust Only the Beasts in the Water, Conyer Clayton; Chis Turnbull’s continua and a great work-in-progess she shared with me; I’ve re-read Jason Christie’s glass language (excerpt) a few times with deeper appreciation at each go; Gathering by Alec Finlay for the geopoetics of it; Jordan Abel’s Injun; Whereas, Layli Long Soldier; Anne Carson’s Float.
sophie anne edwards is a writer, visual artist,
curator and community arts educator based on Mnidoo Mnising (Manitoulin
Island). Her rubber boots and fieldbooks are so oft-used that their seams and
spines give out on a regular basis.
A selection of her visual poems appeared in the second issue.
I may have been doing visual poetry before I knew I was, just as I didn’t know I was a geographer until I went to a cross disciplinary conference organized between a geography and a literature department in the UK in 2007. It isn’t surprising; I’ve never liked boxes or definitions, and tend toward multi- (or inter-)disciplinarity. When I was actively painting, I layered in texts to ‘trouble’ landscape painting; although I would never have defined it as visual poetry.
I worked for many years as a curator of land-based installation works (including with Elemental Festival, which I founded in 2006); my interest in installation-based practices and my geographical training have influenced my installation-based visual poems.
As a geographer, I am interested in how visual poetry can consider the spatial. In most of my work, I attempt to engage with the multi-directional process of an ecosystem, through/with the visual, and the bodily, along with consideration of the historical, colonial, and social that construct landscapes. I’m attracted to how visual poetry touches upon the spatial, hints at the non-linear, and the still-in-the-making, and allows me to cross between forms.
How does your visual work interact with your writing?
I am a visual thinker; this sensibility to the visual makes its way into my writing. As a geographer trained to do field research, I have used fieldbooks for many years; I use writing and sketching as forms of ‘thinking through’, observation, and research. My fieldbooks integrate writing, poetry, and visual notes; I have a hard time thinking in a single form. There has been a poetic turn in geography with some interesting work being done to open up research to creative methodologies and academic writing that is attuned to language and poetry, and I've been engaging in those conversations.
Ecosystems are multi-sensory, non-linear, and multi-directional. Visual poetry engages the visual and to some extent the spatial, but I am also interested in the tactile, the audial, the process, and want to move beyond the limits of the page. In response, some of my visual poetry is installed on-site, and invites/participates in the changes, influences and processes of the ecosystem. My installed work also integrates letters/words, and therefore questions the limits of language and ‘author’. Sometimes I document these works, sometimes not; so there are poems that no one sees at all in photographic form or otherwise, unless they happen upon them while walking off trail.
How does a poem begin?
I walk. I often see a visual ‘poem’ or installation before I have words. I struggle to find the language. In response, I have created some works that are installed and invite the ecosystem to ‘write’. I thought I might then create the poem from these influences, but have found that the photographs of the installed work changing over time is the poem, somehow. Some poems come from following lines or traces in the bush and I translate them. Sometimes they are more researched or structured, or I work from found materials (archival, cultural etc.). It’s really an experiment.
Have you a daily schedule by which you work, or are you working to fit this in between other activities?
I don’t currently have a daily writing schedule, although I am certainly more productive (and I find the writing is better) when I do. When I am able to be more structured, I still fit the writing in around the rest of life (work, family responsibilities and so on). My best ‘fitted in’ writing schedule is to write for an hour in the morning before work, then for a couple of hours on the weekend. I read a lot, and do a lot of thinking about my writing throughout the rest of the week. Walking is often a way for me to write in my head; these activities are part of my writing practice. It would be a luxury - and I think quite productive - to have extended blocks for writing and thinking. I’m extremely grateful to have recently received a Canada Council for the Arts writing grant. It will give me two months of writing time this winter.
What are your favourite print or online literary journals?
I read Brick and The New Quarterly regularly, as well as Arc magazine. Wish I could buy more subscriptions, or that our tiny local library carried literary journals! I dip into a number of online journals as often as I can: Train, Bomb; I like h& for the visual works; Rob McLennan’s My (small) press writing day is great to get a glimpse of writers’ lives; Touch the Donkey.
Who are some of the writers you are reading lately that most excite you?
I have read and re-visited all these in the last few weeks: Eve Joseph’s Quarrels; Trust Only the Beasts in the Water, Conyer Clayton; Chis Turnbull’s continua and a great work-in-progess she shared with me; I’ve re-read Jason Christie’s glass language (excerpt) a few times with deeper appreciation at each go; Gathering by Alec Finlay for the geopoetics of it; Jordan Abel’s Injun; Whereas, Layli Long Soldier; Anne Carson’s Float.
A selection of her visual poems appeared in the second issue.