December 1, 2008
"Late"
Artist Lisa Sette holds a BFA in photography and a master's degree in biology. (full bio).
Writer Jon Ballard received his MA in English from Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, and has taught writing and literature at Oakland Community College in Royal Oak, Michigan. His work has appeared in The Valparaiso Poetry Review, The MacGuffin, Barnwood Magazine, Blue Earth Review, Soundings East and many others. He is the author of three poetry chapbooks: Lonesome (Pudding House, 2007), Sad Town (Maverick Duck Press, 2007), and Trees Make You Think of Other Things, recently released from Foothills Publishing. Another, entitled Such Small Rain, is due out in 2009 from Pudding House. A Michigan native, Jon has lived in Mexico City, Mexico since 2006.
Image: digital photograph

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Collaborators' Q & A for "Late"

Artist Lisa Sette:
What inspired you to "dibs" this poem?
It felt like night.

Writer Jon Ballard:
What surprised you about this collaborative piece?
...The woman in the poem is stranded to a degree, if not physically than certainly emotionally, and the night "coming on fast" is no friend. The artist, I think, captures that.

Read the full responses from Sette & Ballard.
 

November 1, 2008
"Empire"
Artist Helen Beckman Kaplan is a painter from Brooklyn who was educated at Rhode Island School of Design, Tyler School of Art, Indiana University and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. She has been a resident at Yaddo and Millay Colony, and has exhibited her work in New York at AC Project Room and Edward Thorp Gallery. (full bio).
Writer Kathleen Lynch is the author of Hinge (Black Zinnias national poetry prize), and chapbooks How to Build an Owl (Select Poet Series prize, Small Poetry Press); No Spring Chicken, (White Eagle Coffee Store Press award); Alterations of Rising (Small Poetry Press Select Poet Series); Kathleen Lynch-Greatest Hits (Pudding House Publications). She conducts workshops and is a freelance editor. Web site: www.kathleenlynch.com.
Image: "Empire," 10" x 12" watercolor on paper

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Note: "Empire" is the fourth Switcheroo feature from Broadsided. What is The Switcheroo? We'd love to tell you.
 

Collaborators' Q & A for "Empire"

Artist Helen Beckman Kaplan:
When you begin a piece of visual work (or, if that's too broad, when you began this piece), is it color, shape, or some other aspect that you follow?
I started out thinking about how a cleft might be about the same shape as a half-open wallet.

Writer K.A. Lynch:
...can you talk about the experience of finding words that were in conversation with the image?
First I had a sense of cataclysm, as in a natural or man-made disaster (the bright sun occluded by storm, smoke, tsunami, rubble from collapsed buildings, whatever...) Then I dwelled on the idea of any great sundering, whether physical or emotional. But that intense yellow kept pulling me....

Read the full responses from Kaplan & Lynch.
 

October 1, 2008
"Dear Wallet"
Artist Kate Baird, a native of Springfield, MO, now lives in New York City where she paints and reads as much as possible. (full bio).
Writer Aaron Plasek: After studying literature and physics at Drake University, Aaron Plasek edited The Dimebag of Poetry and curated the Et Cet*er*a Reading Series in Des Moines, Iowa, and later earned an MFA in Writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Currently, he provides sustenance for himself as a teacher of writing, but he's done a bit of everything—including a summer-gig as a research assistant working on particle detectors at the University of Chicago and a week long all-nighter using a four-story-tall telescope to observe quasars. His poetry has cropped up in a variety of places, including Diagram where the poem "Dear Wallet" was first published. Fond of beginning ambitious projects, he is concurrently writing a novel and a collection of poems. He lives in Fort Collins and has dreams that oscillate between erecting a home on a nearby forested mountaintop and building a spaceship.
Image: 9" x 12" collage; mixed media on paper.

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Collaborators' Q & A for "Dear Wallet"

Artist Kate Baird:
When you begin a piece of visual work (or, if that's too broad, when you began this piece), is it color, shape, or some other aspect that you follow?
I started out thinking about how a cleft might be about the same shape as a half-open wallet.

Writer Aaron Plasek:
Did the visual artist refract any element of the poem that made you see the poem differently? What surprised you about this collaborative piece?
The image of the fingerprint, for me, was a means to rediscover & re-engage the poem, to remember an old self I had misplaced, to reinvent the meaning of the poem—which is maybe what all good collaborations do.

Read the full responses from Baird & Plasek.
 

September 1, 2008
"Open"
Artist Kevin Morrow is a native of Wisconsin who received his BFA in sculpture from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 2003. Soon thereafter, he received his MFA degree from the University of Auckland, New Zealand where he studied in the Contemporary Maori Department (Te Toi Hou). (full bio).
Writer Jericho Brown worked as speechwriter for the Mayor of New Orleans before receiving his Ph.D. in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Houston. He also holds an M.F.A. from the University of New Orleans, a B.A. from Dillard University, and he has served as poetry editor at Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts. His poems have appeared in Callaloo, The Iowa Review, jubilat, New England Review, and Prairie Schooner. The recipient of a Cave Canem Fellowship, two scholarships to the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference, and two travel fellowships to the Krakow Poetry Seminar in Poland, Brown is currently an Assistant Professor of English at the University of San Diego where he teaches creative writing. Western Michigan University's New Issues Poetry & Prose published his first book, Please.
Image: "Sharecropper," 15" x 20"; pen and ink on paper.

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Collaborators' Q & A for "Open"

Artist Kevin Morrow:
What first leapt out at you from the poem and what was your gut response?
My gut response to the poem was not an image or anything like that—it was to dibs the poem itself before anyone else would...as soon as I read it, I just felt that it would be a good match...

Writer Jericho Brown:
What surprised you about this collaborative piece?
The leaves in the image point everywhere like wild arrows. I just love that.

Read the full responses from Morrow & Brown.
 

August 1, 2008
"Ghazal for the Woman from Vitez"
Artist Undine Brod earned a BFA in Ceramic Art and a BA in Interdisciplinary Art from the University of Washington. Currently she lives and works in New York City and has exhibited her work in the Pacific Northwest, New York and internationally. (full bio).
Writer Susan Rich lives in Seattle. She is the author of Cures Include Travel, published by White Pine Press. Her book The Cartographer's Tongue, Poems of the World won the PEN USA Award for Poetry and the Peace Corps Writers Award. Her poems appear in the Alaska Quarterly Review, Gettysburg Review, Poetry International, New England Review and Quarterly West. Susan has worked in Bosnia, Niger, and Gaza on behalf of human rights. "Ghazal for the Woman from Vitez" is published in The Cartographer's Tongue. Visit her at www.susanrich.net.
Image: 8" x 11.5"; paper collage.

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Collaborators' Q & A for "Ghazal for the Woman from Vitez"

Artist Undine Brod:
If the broadside collaboration were a food dish, what would it be?
Hmmmm, there are so many possibilites... I also think in the realm of a food dish that has a main component and then a covering similar to a tamale and I try to figure out which is what—do the poems contain the art or does the art become the containment because it gives the poem a place?

Writer Susan Rich:
Did the visual artist refract any element of the poem that made you see the poem differently?
...the woman from Vitez, the woman the poem is dedicated to, was in her fifties. In the broadside she appears as a young girl. I think she'd like that....

Read the full responses from Rich & Brod.
 

July 1, 2008
"Neighborhood Watch"
Artist Douglas Culhane works in sculpture and drawing. He has exhibited in New York and New England. See more of his work at www.douglasculhane.com. (full bio).
Writer Anjali Khosla is 28 years old and grew up in Minnesota. She is an MFA graduate student at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. "Neighborhood Watch" is her first poem to be accepted for publication. Her poetry appears in or is forthcoming from GlitterPony and Global Widespread Panic. Her fiction has been published by the Stickman Review.
Image: "and ants"; 9" x 12"; material pencil on paper.

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Collaborators' Q & A for "Neighborhood Watch"

Artist Douglas Culhane:
What inspired you to "dibs" this poem?
There is an openness to this poem both visually and textually. It conveys that sense of thoughts taking shape just as the words appear on the page—something only poetry can do. Also, the ants.

Writer Anjali Khosla:
What surprised you about this collaborative piece?
The editors encouraged me to put off the syntactic slips early in the poem, postponing the first "are" to the second stanza. The poem's format has been altered, as well—...

Read the full responses from Khosla & Culhane.
 

June 1, 2008
"Under Construction"
Artist Ira Joel Haber is a sculptor, painter, book dealer and teacher who sometimes writes poetry and movie reviews. His work is in the collections of New York University, The Guggenheim Museum, The Hirshorn Museum & The Albright-Knox Art Gallery. (full bio).
Writer Leah Browning is the author of two nonfiction books for teens and pre-teens (Capstone Press, 2006) and is currently under contract for a third. Her fiction, poetry, essays, and articles have appeared or are forthcoming in publications including The Saint Ann's Review, Queen's Quarterly, 42opus, Halfway Down the Stairs, Literary Mama, Autumn Sky Poetry, in several anthologies, and as part of a series of postcards from the program Poetry Jumps Off the Shelf. She was born and raised in New Mexico. A slightly different version of "Under Construction" first appeared in Blood Orange Review, October 2006.
Image: untitled, 9" x 12," collage on notebook paper.

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Collaborators' Q & A for "Under Construction"

Artist Ira Joel Haber:
What first leapt out at you from the poem and what was your gut response?
I liked the title under construction. Aren't we all still construction?

Writer Leah Browning:
What did you think an artist would pick up on from your poem?
I tried not to have any expectations. Still, though, I think I expected something compact, something very black and white and finite.

Read the full responses from Haber & Browning.
 

May 1, 2008
"Meditation on the Treason of His Body"
Artist Alesia F. Norling writes, "My history includes growing up on a working farm, giving my poor parents an amazing amount of grief, and reluctantly attending various grade schools. Eventually, I found my niche at the Rhode Island School of Design. I'm a professional daydreamer and my artwork is dictated by emotion." (full bio).
Writer Joe Wilkins lives and writes in Forest City, Iowa, where he directs the creative writing program at Waldorf College. His work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in The Georgia Review, The Missouri Review, Northwest Review, Pleiades, Tar River Poetry, and Best New Poets 2006, among other literary journals. His essay "A Story and a Prayer" recently won The Obsidian Prize for writing about the American West.
Image: "The Treason of His Body," 2008, 14" x 10", mixed-media on antique book cover.

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Collaborators' Q & A for "Meditation on the Treason of His Body"

Artist Alesia F. Norling:
What inspired you to "dibs" this poem?
It just jives perfectly with my style of art—dark but subtle with lots of layers.

Writer Joe Wilkins:
Every time I try to draw something on the board, my students loudly remind me what a terrible artist I am; so I wasn't at all sure what a visual artist would pick up on in my poem! However, I'm delighted with the result. Alesia's print seems to me to radically deepen the poem.

Read the full responses from Norling & Wilkins.
 

April 1, 2008
"Among Trees (or) The Heart is a Bee Hive"
Artist Elizabeth Terhune received her MFA from Hunter College and her BA from Oberlin College. She was the recipient of a Yaddo Fellowship in 1998. She has exhibited widely throughout the United States and recently had a one-person exhibition at the Lake George Arts Project, Lake George, NY. (full bio).
Writer Cindy St. John is a native Texan currently living in Kalamazoo, MI, where she is completing her MFA in creative writing.
Image: "Among Trees," 2008, 6" x 8.5", Bister ink on paper.

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Note: "Among Trees (or) The Heart is a Bee Hive" is the third Switcheroo feature from Broadsided. What is The Switcheroo? We'd love to tell you.
 

Collaborators' Q & A for "Among Trees (or) The Heart is a Bee Hive"

Artist Elizabeth Terhune:
...it was really humbling to know there were people writing to engage in collaboration with my drawing and I want to express my appreciation and gratitude. A studio practice can be isolating. Thank you to everyone for taking the time to look at, think and write about a drawing.

Writer Cindy St. John:
This poem was written in response to Elizabeth Terhune's art—can you talk about the experience of finding words that were in conversation with the image?
I stared at the piece for some time and tried to write about it, but everything just seemed contrived and cheesy. I decided my connection to it was not about the images themselves, but more of an emotional connection. So, I wrote a poem that I felt reflected the same sort of urgency of the painting

Read the full responses from Terhune & St. John.
 

March 1, 2008
"Mayflies"
Artist Helen Beckman Kaplan is a painter from Brooklyn who was educated at Rhode Island School of Design, Tyler School of Art, Indiana University and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. She has been a resident at Yaddo and Millay Colony, and has exhibited her work in New York at AC Project Room and Edward Thorp Gallery. (full bio).
Writer Roy Seeger recieved his MA in poetry from Ohio University and his MFA (also in poetry) from Western Michigan University where he teaches part-time. His poems have appeared in, or are forthcoming from, The Laurel Review, Cream City Review, Hotel Amerika, Verse, The Southeast Review, Green Mountain Review, Gulf Coast, Mississippi Review as well as other journals. His work has also been featured on Verse Daily, and was the winner of the first Buckbee, A Writer Inc. "Sadness Writing Contest." His chapbook The Garden of Improbable Birds is available from Gribble Press. He lives in Kalamazoo with his wife and small dog. "Mayflies" was first published in The Southeast Review
Image: "Wing," 2008, 8.5" x 11", Gouache on paper.

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Collaborators' Q & A for "Mayflies"

Artist Helen Beckman Kaplan:
In what sense did the poem first present itself as a collaboration with a visual medium?
I was ultimately drawn to the idea of the delicacy of mayfly wings. I thought of trying to use the words in the poem to form the lines of the tracery of the wing, but then after fooling around with that for while...

Writer Roy Seeger:
What surprised you about this collaborative piece?
I guess I expected the artwork to be illustrative rather than conceptual.... The differences made me rethink my interpretation of the poem. Or more specifically it gave me another interpretation of this poem. Thank you.

Read the full responses from Kaplan & Seeger.
 

February 1, 2008
"The Prosthetic"
Artist Elizabeth Terhune received her MFA from Hunter College and her BA from Oberlin College. She was the recipient of a Yaddo Fellowship in 1998. She has exhibited widely throughout the United States and recently had a one-person exhibition at the Lake George Arts Project, Lake George, NY. (full bio).
Writer Joy Icayan works as project assistant for a government agency. She lives and writes in the Philippines. She has a degree in psychology and does freelance writing and research for several companies. She has been published in 2River View, Philippine Studies, and elsewhere.
Image: "Anonymous House," 2007, 8.5" x 6", Bister ink on paper.

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Collaborators' Q & A for "The Prosthetic"

Artist Elizabeth Terhune:
What inspired you to "dibs" this poem?
Quite honestly, this poem initially felt like it was "too much" for me to handle emotionally—I held off....But this poem is a nugget of feeling and image and it stayed with me. I was particularly taken with its modesty and its quietness.

Writer Joy Icayan:
If your poem were a type of bird, what would it be?
Where I live, they paint chicks and sell them. The multicolored chicks are a treat to little kids. (And then the chicks die soon after because of the paint).

Read the full responses from Terhune & Icayan.
 

January 1, 2008
"Canned Food Drive"
Artist Jim Benning is a photographer/designer loving in Anchorage, Alaska using images to show how he sees things, places and people that ignite his curiosity. He says: "As a member of the board for the Alaska Photographic Center I work to bring photographers to Alaska to share their photographic vision and inspiration with the local community." (full bio).
Writer Kathleen Lynch's collection Hinge (2006) won the Black Zinnias Press National Poetry Book Competition. Her chapbooks includeHow to Build an Owl (Select Poet Series Award, Small Poetry Press, 1995), No Spring Chicken (White Eagle Coffee Store Press Award, 2001), Alterations of Rising (Small Poetry Press Select Poet Series, 2001) and Kathleen Lynch—Greatest Hits (Pudding House Publications, 2002).

Her work (prose and poetry) appears in several anthologies, including The Next River Over—A Collection of Irish American Writing (New Rivers Press), Times Ten: An Anthology of Northern California Poets (Small Poetry Press), and a college textbook, Criteria for Writing (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc). Her poems appear in many literary journals, and she received the Spoon River Poetry Review Editor's Choice Award, the Salt Hill Poetry Award, Two Rivers Review Prize, Peregrine and Sow's Ear prizes, several Pushcart nominations and a 2007 residency fellowship at the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming.

She worked as Coordinator of Writers In Performance, and Writers' Workshops for San Jose Center for Poetry and Fiction, served as board member for the San Jose Center for Literature and Arts, taught through Poets in the Schools (all grade levels), mentors individual poets, and conducts Teachers' In-Service training programs for elementary and high school teachers. Lynch also publishes fiction, essays and reviews, and does free-lance editing. She lives in Carmichael CA.

Website: www.kathleenlynch.com
Image: "shipping or storage by request," 2 panels 12" x 18", pigment ink print

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Extra! Extra!:

Artist Jim Benning was doubly inspired by Kathleen Lynch's poem. He created two visual responses—one in the traditional Braodsided format and another that we've repurposed into an online presentation here.

Collaborators' Q & A for "Canned Food Drive"

Artist Jim Benning:
Can you talk about your dual visual response?
Originally I had this impression of the compartmentalization of people's lives and how they may try to ship their solutions off to other situations how ever different those lives may be...

Writer Kathleen Lynch:
What did you think an artist would pick up on from your poem?
Possibly moonlight on kids' bicycles, sycamores as guards, shrub as fort, "big bellied planes," maybe a can or pile of cans.

Read the full responses from Benning & Lynch.