POETICS (IN)FORM 1999

Poetics (in)form is a project that introduces traditional verse forms in combination with experimental collaborative writing. It was inspired by the glosa, an early Renaissance form of the Spanish court. In the glosa, one poet pays homage to another by borrowing a quatrain whose lines are incorporated into a poem of four ten-line stanzas.*

In similar fashion, but less stringently, selections from existing (contemporary) poetry will be used to build new hybrid works along pre-defined themes. Guest poets will be invited to submit work and some of the collaborative results will be performed as public installations.

In the first installation (Victoria -- June 19,1999), I will use a stanza from "Weedflower Mind," a poem by Christopher Patton. Patton is a widely published Vancouver poet and was recently a Fellow at Yaddo in New York State. His sequence "Broken Ground" is forthcoming in The Paris Review.

* definitive examples: P.K. Page, 'Hologram.'