Is the job of the poet “poetry”? Who are the poet’s co-workers or colleagues? Where is she permitted to work and to what ends? For what reward? These questions are answered in different ways by poets Lara Mimosa Montes and Jared Stanley, each of whom has relocated her or his worksite from the field of literature to alternate commercial and intellectual grounds. Rather than merely appropriate and recontextualize language from non-literary sources, Montes and Stanley adopt and transform the practices, gestures, skills, and demeanors associated with the other professional sectors from which they borrow.
For “New Appropriations,” Montes and Stanley will each give a brief presentation concerning their own poetic work and research into the fields of self-help authorship and actuarial services, respectively. They will additionally present the fruits of their labor (i.e., poems), which exist both as images to be looked at and as texts to be read.
Following the presentations, there will be a workshop. Participants are encouraged to bring their own administrative and other professional texts: contracts, manuals, reports, sales quotes, employee handbooks, etc. (Professional texts will also be on hand.) Using a Xerox machine and other available office supplies, participants will transform these texts. Montes and Stanley will edit a selection of these new appropriations to be published by Revolver.
Moderated by Triple Canopy editor Lucy Ives.
- Lucy Ives is the author of many books of poetry and prose, including The Hermit (2016), the novella nineties (2013), and, most recently, the novel Impossible Views of the World (2017, published by Penguin Press. Her writing has appeared in Artforum, Lapham’s Quarterly, Bomb, Conjunctions, The New Yorker, and Triple Canopy, where she was an editor for several years.
- Lara Mimosa Montes is a senior editor of Triple Canopy. Her poems and essays have appeared in Fence, BOMB, The Third Rail, Unbag, Jacket2, and elsewhere. She holds a PhD in English from The CUNY Graduate Center. Her first book, The Somnambulist, was published by Horse Less Press in 2016, and her second book, Thresholes, is forthcoming from Coffee House Press. She was born in the Bronx.
- Revolver is a Minneapolis-St. Paul literary arts organization, rousing creators since 2012. Revolver designs physical and digital environments for collaborations between artists and disciplines, as well as orchestrating low-risk, high-fun methods for the public to engage in a wide spectrum of creativity in the literary arts.
- Jared Stanley is a poet, writer, and interdisciplinary artist, He is the author of three collections of poetry, Ears, The Weeds, and Book Made of Forest. Stanley has received Fellowships from the Center for Art + Environment and the Nevada Arts Council, and teaches writing and interdisciplinary art at Sierra Nevada College, where he co-directs the SNC Poetry Center. His collaborations with the public art group Unmanned Minerals and the Intermedia Artist Megan Berner include It Calls From the Creek and Surrender.