The New Concrete Poetry: Object Poetry & Terri Witek's "Materiality" Series (Interview by De Villo Sloan + Commentary) (OBJECT POETRY PART 1)
In my articles on Asemic Front 2 and elsewhere, I have noted the appearance of a new form of object poetry in the highly digital environment of contemporary concrete poetry, visual poetry and asemic writing. In this milieu, there is no mediating poetic text other than documentation. Simply stated: The object IS the poem, as Louis Zukofsky suggested in his writing about Objectivist poetry.
I have been observing many permutations of the new object poetry with keen interest. While intrigued, I feel the best way to understand this potential new genre is to begin by asking the poets themselves. Terri Witek and Geof Huth have captured my interest for several years with their innovative object poems; I recommend their work.
For my first foray into the subject, I interviewed Terri Witek about her materiality series, which has fascinated and at times perplexed me. This project has been in-process for a decade. I find the shear materiality of the pieces moving and powerful. I also find myself thinking about conceptual and materialist forms, what an object poetry nouveau means for us and what it means for Terri Witek.
AF2: Please give us some background about how you imagined and created your materiality series?
Terri Witek: It’s kind of you to ask, De Villo, and thanks for the work you do to expand poetry’s possibilities through these discussions.
Some years back I started thinking about using social media platforms as possible poetic forms. I began by asking people for addresses and one physical detail from a house where they had been happy: that ran for 24 hours. Then the address + the detail of a house where they’d lived when something bad had happened: another 24 hours. I loved the resulting long list poem/performance piece. But something really shook the tree when my longtime collaborator, Brazilian visual artist Cyriaco Lopes, remarked that Facebook was, after all, 'a book of faces.'
Partly because this synced with something. When my mother died (flaking red brick/429 Lawrence) and we were dividing things up, I requested what she called her ‘boudoir set.’ This had rested on a dresser for as long as we could remember. When I flipped over the mirror, it was, shockingly, glassless. I took it home in my suitcase.
The surprise became a chance: How would I fill my mother’s mirror with something other than her unmarried young face (which I had also never seen)? I then filled the mirror with items from my house, photographed it and posted it face outward on Facebook.
AF2: What were the physical joys and challenges of assembling the pieces?
Terri Witek: Favorite question award for this one! Thank you. In the 10 years that materiality/empty mirror has floated by on various streams, it has morphed many times. For instance, the various streams change. (I’m surprised more people still don’t use them as a place to make rather than share or support work.)
Throughout, my set-up is quick and basic: vertical phone photo, same table. But the way I think about the work has changed. I began, as mentioned, by ‘filling’ the mirror with whatever occurred to me rattling around in my house. The mirror leaks, I discovered, so things like ketchup worked better than coffee.
My favorite liquid-featuring photo is a toss-up between a mirror fizzing with antacids and one slicked with breast milk. The latter does not look like much, but it was fun titling it materiality:empty mirror/mom juice to avoid having it nixed on Facebook.
I think empty mirror/v [shown in post] is closest to one of the early ‘fill’ mirrors. At some point, though, it occurred to me to be more ‘sculptural.’ That is when Dona Mayoora asked to feature some of my series in the Judith: Women Making Visual Poetry anthology (Timglaset 2021). I think materiality:empty mirror/snow dome is in that vein. Materiality: empty mirror/pineapple is from a newer idea. I've started taking photographs earlier in the morning in side-lit dark; now the series includes things like the foot of a stool. This also produces photos that shrink the mirrors: These new shots do not look like portraiture anymore. I have thought the series was running out several times. Then somehow something else happens. Thanks, mom.
AF2: Your series is rooted in materiality yet has a conceptual art quality. Do you see ‘materiality’ as ultimately conceptual art?
Terri Witek: Ah, classifying these things is something I avoid. Different people seem to find interesting things to say depending upon their work and situation: Cyriaco, as a visual artist, can talk very cogently about the historical idea and timeline of this term, for example.
As a poet, I would never presume. I seem to write what the Italian visual poetry journal UTSANGA files under ‘poetic theory,’ but even in those pieces, I think description + idea is more my mode.
I have been honored to be welcomed in various roving groups, to be included in art as well as literary and to be asked about my work as you have done so generously here, and that in my poetic practice I always care about the ideas of things and their materialities.
AF2: Thank you, Terri Witek for giving of your time generously and contributing significantly to our ongoing discussions of poetic theory, asemic writing, visual poetry and other forms.
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