jai
poet-artist
my artistic journey and a bit of a statement

         
Eve and Adam from the poemART "miring"
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Where does poetry end? Where does art begin?
Where does poetry end? Where does art begin? It is hard to say in my poemART, which turns words into art, sometimes on a room-size basis.
           Many years ago, I had the impulse to draw the letters of the words of one of my poems, rather than typing or writing them. The letters became abstract and I added other abstract elements, creating a series of drawing-painting-collages out of and around the words. My first poemART was 36 "drawings." Another was 20.

Room-Poems
When my 20-drawing poemART was going to be exhibited, they told me they were planning to paint the gallery so I said, "Let me do my thing first," and they did. Using paint, fancy papers, fabric, and objects, I developed my first room-poem (a name, as well as genre, I have originated) by creating an installation/environment on the walls around the 20 drawings of the poem. I also created a sculpture in the center of the room. A tape recording with me performing a long, dramatic version of the poem ran intermittently.
           Except for that first exhibit, I have created room-poems directly on the walls of a room or on large sheets of paper (fabric, etc.) that are developed to be part of a full-room exhibit. In some room-poems, such as the one I created at Wellesley College in 1998 called "The Handwriting on the Walls," words predominate even though their letters often become abstract. In a later version of this same room-poem--in a very different room that had glass on two sides--at the Twentieth Century Literature Conference at the University of Louisville, abstract and semi-representational images dominated the words.

Part of room-poem at the
Twentieth Century Literature Conference
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To read "The Handwriting on the Walls," click here.


           When my poems become visual, whether on canvases or on the walls of a room, the parts and the whole are meant to communicate as art does, not to be read per se. In an exhibition, I always label my word collages. I also perform the poem in the room, and a tape recording runs intermittently. This gives people a choice. They can experience the room-poem simply visually, or as a combination of visuals and words/sounds.

Leading Groups in Creating Room-Poems
In Dunfermline, Scotland, I led a group of social-work client families in creating a room-poem. I chose the theme of water, to which I felt everyone could relate. We met for an afternoon and discussed the theme. Then over the next week I created a long, dramatic poem that included a lot of the words, feelings, and ideas people had expressed--I felt I was giving a voice to people who would not otherwise have one.
           The next time we met, we all recorded the words and then began to create the visual part of the poem. Each person had a water theme-word and a section of wall in an old schoolhouse. I brought in lots of paint, fancy papers, fabric, and objects of all sorts. I told my group that the idea was to create what their water word meant to them inside, not necessarily what it looked like on the outside. Our room-poem was on exhibition for a week with our recording running intermittently during the exhibition.


Lower left: Part of Door to the Future by Kayla McDonough.
Right: The Past by Katie Barksdale.
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           Recently in Pittsburgh, I received a grant to lead a group of inner-city youth (ages 8-16) in creating a room-poem. I guided them in writing word poems around our theme: time, and wove their poems into a longer, dramatic poem that we recorded. Then everyone had a section of wall in a room in an old building that was scheduled to be refurbished, and we created the visual part of the poem (which has been preserved on videotape).
           In January/February 2000, I led an international group of 11 women in creating a room-poem about Peace. (See Peace Talk.)

poemART on the Computer
I have long typed my poetry to create visual effect and meaning through the way the words are arranged on the page. About 10 years ago, I started adding color, type choices, and other visual elements to some of my typed poems. Other poems started to emerge immediately in both words and abstract color images. I offer these through The Poem-of-the-Month Club™.
           I now call all of my integrated poetry and art: poemART.

Movement, Sound, Music, and Performance
When I perform my poetry, which I often do, I sometimes create movements to convey in performance some of the visualness of the poem. Movement is another form of visual poetry for me.
           Besides being very visual, my poems are very sound oriented. I often butt rhyming words against each other, sometimes creating incantation, and sometimes working in more than one language for sound and multiple meanings. Music also sometimes comes into my head for my poems or sections of my poems, and I sing these in performance.


The letter "M" from jai's collage alphabet:
M is for Mary so Mild, Mother and Child, Mystical Rose of the Sea
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Why
I create poemART (as well as sound poetry) to allow in more meaning. I believe that art (especially abstract art) enables me to tap into unconscious or pre-verbal aspects of what I (or other people, when I am leading a group) am trying to express. I believe these other levels are also part of the meaning of the poem. I believe this type of integrated verbal-visual communication carried to the level of literature and art is very important in this age where communication is becoming more and more visual and yet is and must be word-based. And I believe combining words and art helps bridge both personal and cultural gaps (even more so when I work multilingually).

To put what I do in a bit of historical context, I believe I work in the tradition of illuminated manuscripts, visual poetry (Blake, Apollinaire, cummings, Solt) and Oriental calligraphy/painting. I extend this by:

  • integrating poetry and art so that it is often hard to say where poetry ends and art begins,
  • adding intellectual and visual complexity--other visual poems generally have only one visual and intellectual idea,
  • creating abstract art rather than illustration.
My art has its own meaning, which is related to the words but may not be saying the same thing. Also the letters of the words themselves often become abstract and part of the art.