BROADSIDED: 2007

December 1, 2007
"Visitation"
Artist: Kate Baird (bio).
Writer Noel Sloboda: Originally from Massachusetts, Noel Sloboda currently lives in Pennsylvania. He teaches at Penn State York and serves as dramaturg for the Harrisburg Shakespeare Festival. His poems have appeared in journals based in the United States, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom.
Image: 9" x 12", gouache and pencil on paper.

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Collaborator's Q & A for "Visitation"

Artist Kate Baird:
Seen any good art lately?
Martin Puryear show at MoMA

Writer Noel Sloboda:
Did the visual artist refract any element of the poem that made you see the poem differently?
The striking blue backdrop and billowy smoke make me think of the heavens; they powerfully open up the room I originally imagined for this poem.

Read the full responses from Sloboda & Baird.
 

November 1, 2007
"Bird's Eye"
Artist: Kate Baird (bio).
Writer: Amanda Rachelle Warren is a displaced Appalachian. She has most recently been published in Diner, Crazyhorse, Lit and the Greensboro Review. She is a recent graduate of Western Michigan University's Doctoral program in English, a former poetry editor for Third Coast, and is currently working as both a Part-Time Instructor, and the Assistant to the Dean of the Graduate College at Western Michigan University. The poem published here originally appeared as "Murmuration" in pacificREVIEW.
Image: 30" x 22", mixed media on paper.

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Note: "Bird's Eye" is the second Switcheroo feature from Broadsided. What is The Switcheroo? We'd love to tell you.
 

Collaborator's Q & A for "Bird's Eye"

Artist Kate Baird:
What surprised you about the pairing of this poem with your art?
Since the image is from the perspective of the things that die in the poem, the pairing seemed to create a sort of haunting. While neither the poem nor the image would necessarily do this on its own, I feel like together they draw your attention to the absence of the birds, the consequence of the action that takes place in the poem.

Writer Amanda Warren:
Have you ever written poems in response to art? What was the experience like for you?
Art and poetry have so much in common; as far as I can tell they just use different mediums, the goal is so similar: to enter into a dialog about the human experience, to express a complex idea through metaphor....

Read the full responses from Warren & Baird.
 

October 1, 2007
"Learning History in Nursery School"
Artist: Anya Eramk-Bower (bio).
Writer: Patrick Carrington Patrick Carrington is the poetry editor at the art & literary journal Mannequin Envy (www.mannequinenvy.com). His manuscript Thirst (Codhill, 2007), winner of Codhill Press' 2006 Poetry Chapbook Award, has just been released (www.codhill.com). His poetry has appeared recently (or is forthcoming) in The Connecticut Review, The Potomac Review, Rattle, The Evansville Review, The New York Quarterly, Hunger Mountain, and other journals. Rise, Fall and Acceptance (MSR Publishing, 2006), his first collection, is available at Main St. Rag Press (www.mainstreetrag.com).
Image: "Long Walk;" 2007; 8.5" x 11"; Pencil, ink, computer graphics

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Collaborator's Q & A for "Learning History in Nursery School"

Artist Anya Ermak-Bower:
If the broadside collaboration were a plant, what would it be?
It's full-on autumn in Anchorage and the choke cherries have become ripe. The changing leaves and the cherries together—that's true collaboration!

Writer Patrick Carrington:
What surprised you about the collaborative piece?
How much I enjoyed my collaborator's visual interpretation. I admit that I have never been much of a fan of illustrated poetry. I've always preferred to let words paint their own picture. But...

Read the full responses from Ermak-Bower & Carrington.
 

September 1, 2007
"January Elegy"
Artist: Ira Joel Haber (bio).
Writer: Mary Jo Bang is the author of four books of poetry, including Louise in Love and The Eye Like a Strange Balloon. Her fifth book of poems, Elegy, is forthcoming from Graywolf Press in October of 2007. Individual poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The New Republic, Verse, Fence, Denver Quarterly, two volumes of Best American Poetry, and elsewhere. She's been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Bakeless Prize, and a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University. A graduate of the Columbia University MFA program, she is currently an Associate Professor of English and Director of the Creative Writing Program at Washington University in St. Louis.
Image: "Landscape Notebook Page," 1972, pastel and crayon on lined paper with added touches in 2007, 9.75" x 7.5"

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Collaborator's Q & A for "January Elegy"

Artist Ira Joel Haber:
Did anything surprise you about the collaboration?
It really gave me lots of ideas, I use landscapes in most if not all my work, from my sculptures to my works on paper

Writer Mary Jo Bang:
What did you think an artist would pick up on from your poem?
I didn't have any preconceived notions about what an artist would take from the poem. In fact I rather adamantly tried not to imagine it. I wanted to be surprised. And I am surprised in the most pleasant way possible, especially by the use of color.

Read the full responses from Haber & Bang.
 

August 1, 2007
"Roulade"
Artist: Eva Barash (bio).
Writer: Dilruba Ahmed's poetry won The Florida Review's 2006 Editors' Award. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Cream City Review, Crab Orchard Review, New Orleans Review, Born Magazine, and elsewhere. She lives near Philadelphia. "Roulade" first appeared in Blackbird, November 2005.
Image: 9" x 12"; collage, ink and pencil on paper.

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Collaborator's Q & A for "Roulade"

Artist Eva Barash:
Did anything surprise you about the collaboration?
It was harder than I thought it would be. It was like the feeling of able to sing a song perfectly to yourself in your own head; It's on key and everything like that, but then to open your mouth and have the same sound come out is a whole different thing. My drawing was very complicated in the beginning, and then I erased most of it and felt much better.

Writer Dilruba Ahmed:
What surprised you about this collaborative piece?
I enjoyed this collaboration very much—especially the feeling that the poem took on a life beyond me or beyond what I had intended in the original writing.

Read the full responses from Barash & Ahmed.
 

July 1, 2007
"Collected Fragments Detailing Your Journey"
Artist: Jim Benning (bio).
Writer: Jason Fraley works at an investment firm in West Virginia. He is currently seeking a publisher for his first full length collection, Palsy Aria. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Forklift Ohio, 42opus, The Hat, Pebble Lake Review, Caketrain, and No Tell Motel.
Image: "Inside Passage;" Digital photograph.

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Collaborator's Q & A for "Collected Fragments Detailing Your Journey"

Artist Jim Benning:
What inspired you to "dibs" this poem?
The idea of a search, movement. All the things/places and associations that come to mind when one awareness of seeing is attended to.

Writer Jason Fraley:
Did the visual artist refract any element of the poem that made you see the poem differently?
I had not imagined the tunnel aspect of this poem so clearly. Jim did a fantastic job of replicating a tunnel that looks very much like the tunnels plowing through West Virginia's mountains. The idea of this scene taking place in a darkened world until the very end, until the burning house is approached, gives the poem a different aura or atmosphere than what I had otherwise envisioned.

Read the full responses from Benning & Fraley.
 

June 1, 2007
"The Car Covenant"
Artist: Lisa Sette (bio).
Writer: Robert Strong lives north of the Adirondack park and bikes to work year round. He is the editor of Joyful Noise: An Anthology of American Spiritual Poetry and author of Puritan Spectacle, from which "The Car Covenant" is adapted.
Image: "Want;" Digital photograph.

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Collaborator's Q & A for "The Car Covenant"

Artist Lisa Sette:
If this poem were a weather pattern, what would it be?
A really bright sunny day. No clouds. It hurts.

Writer Robert Strong:
The color in this photograph is right on the surface and dusty on the side of the road. It made me realize how much color is in this poem and that I don't write on image (color), but on America. Which is filled with the kind of bright buy-me colors we see here in this photo.

Read the full responses from Sette & Strong.
 

May 1, 2007
"Third Crescent Moon (After Ritsos)"
Artist: Caleb Brown (bio).
Writer: Leslie Chang's work appears in Crab Orchard Review, The Iowa Review, Agni, The Nation, and elsewhere. She is a recipient of the Grolier Poetry Prize and was awarded the Alan Collins scholarship to the 2006 Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. She lives in New York City.
Image: "Grandmother Crab;" watercolor pencil on paper; 8.5" x 9.5".

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Collaborator's Q & A for "Third Crescent Moon (After Ritsos)"

Writer Leslie Chang:
I was surprised by how close the details in Caleb's piece are to what I imagined. But more fantastic, which is good. I am enamored of the blue horse.

Read the full response from Chang.
 

April 1, 2007: "The Switcheroo"
"Dishes"
Artist: Anya Ermak-Bower (bio).
Writer: Anna Mueller is a creative non-fiction student in the MFA program at the University of Montana. This is her first fiction publication.
Image: "Whatever it Takes to See the Sunrise;" colored pencil and ink on tinted paper; 8" x 10".

"Dishes" is the first Broadsided Switcheroo feature. What is The Switcheroo? We'd love to tell you.

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Collaborator's Q & A for "Dishes"

Artist Anya Ermak-Bower:
Did the story refract any element of the art that made you see the your piece differently?
Yes, absolutely. Anna's response startled me: I couldn't believe the way her writing precisely conveys my overall spiritual and emotional state at the time I started the piece. When I first read it, I thought, "Wait—what does this have to do with the the illustration? Do the two pieces have a conversation or are there two running monologues here?" ...

Writer Anna Mueller:
The art presented itself as an emotion—a combination of effort, frustration, and loneliness. I wanted to create a similar emotion through scene.

Read the full responses from Mueller & Ermak-Bower.
 

March 1, 2007
"Circus: Spotlight on the Ring"
Artist: Ira Joel Haber (bio).
Writer: Christine Byl lives and writes in Healy, Alaska, a major-league stone's throw from Denali National Park, where she shares a cabin with her husband, an artist, and her sled dog, a bodhisattva. Besides writing, her abiding passions include winter, mountain adventures, used bookstores, and great sushi (okay, even pretty good sushi will do).
Image: "5 Cents a Dance;" mixed media.

Read the excerpted Broadsided story in its entirety here: "Cirucs".

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Collaborator's Q & A for "Circus: Spotlight on the Ring"

Artist Ira Joel Haber:
If the broadside collaboration were a land formation, what would it be?
A ditch in a valley.

Writer Christine Byl:
Let's say that your broadside collaboration was a first date. How did it go? First base? Second? Nightcap? Would you make plans for a second date?
Definite second date. I really like Ira's sensibility, I'd love to see more of his work. This piece feels very "primary" to me—like grade school, like bright colors, like primitive—in all the best senses of those words.

Read the full responses from Byl & Haber.
 

February 1, 2007
"Snow Over Shaver's Fork"
Artist: Elizabeth Terhune (bio).
Poet: Brian Barker's first book of poems, The Animal Gospels, won the Tupelo Press Editors' Prize. His poems, reviews, and interviews have appeared in such journals as Poetry, Agni, Quarterly West, American Book Review, The Writer's Chronicle, The Indiana Review, Blackbird, Sou'wester, and River Styx. His awards include an Academy of American Poets Prize and a finalist recognition for the Campbell Corner Poetry Prize. He earned a B.A. from Virginia Commonwealth University, an M.F.A. from George Mason University, and a Ph.D. from the University of Houston. He has taught at the University of Houston and the University of Missouri, and is currently an Assistant Professor and Director of Creative Writing at Murray State University in Murray, KY.
Image: "Inward Spirit Pair;" 2007; ink on paper; 11" x 8".

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Collaborator's Q & A for "Snow Over Shaver's Fork"

Artist Elizabeth Terhune: I feel a deep sense of responsibility to the poets. I feel I am working for them. The point of the image within this context is to be a visual draw for the poem. It is important for me to work with this guideline or underlying cause. It is a different approach—in some ways—than just making an image for its own expressive purposes. One of the things I enjoy about collaboration is that it pushes me into new territory.

Poet Brian Barker:
If your poem were a weather pattern, what would it be?
A blizzard, of course.

Read the full responses from Barker & Terhune.
 

January 1, 2007
"Eros"
Artist: Kate Baird (bio).
Poet: H.D..
Poet HD (1886 - 1961) was a poet, novelist, and memoirist. She was part of London's bohemian culture and the first woman to be granted the American Academy of Arts and Letters medal. "Eros" is excerpted from a longer poem.
Image: Charcoal, graphite and collage on paper; 36" x 24".

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