ABOUT SWITCHEROOSTurnabout is fair play. The best way we can think to repay the pool of artists who have been creating work for Broadsided is to offer them an opportunity to see how writers might respond to their work. In a Switcheroo, we invite writers to submit poetry and prose in response to a piece of visual work created by one of the Broasdided artists.
Keep an eye on Broadsided for future Switcheroos. We hope to do two a year. |
Editors' Note
It shouldn't be a surprise to find that a piece of art elicits from writers a vast range of responses. Yet we found ourselves, reading through submissions to this third Switcheroo, newly-astonished at the variety of styles, subjects, and stances that Elizabeth Terhune's many-winged image inspired.
Terhune's sepia-toned bister ink work is at once chaotic and simple. It can be read as fanciful (an abundance of legs and wings!) or as dire (the dark, dark bodies). Writers sent us poems and stories about love gone wrong, decay, the erotics of bees, strange-winged angels, and even a piece that referenced the recent terrifying die-offs of honeybees that have been in the news in the past few years. Terhune's work seemed to evoke, in poets in particular, wild excesses of startling imagery—no doubt in response to the work's own excesses.
In the end, two poems spoke strongest when put in conversation with the art. "The Heart is a Bee Hive" by Cindy St. John and "Among Trees" by Tammy Trendle. We wrestled. We discussed. We called in outside opinions. The two poems were so different in style, and each cast a different light on Terhune's art. In the end, the dark emotion of St. John's "The Heart is a Bee Hive" won the day. What a surprise to have the subject be not erotic love but familial love, not the pastoral but the inscape of the diseased body.
Because we lingered so long over both poems, we'd like to print below Tammy Trendle's "Among Trees." The quick leaps of viewpoint in this well-made poem resonated with the chaos in Terhune's image. We hope you enjoy both poems and the final Broadsided publication.
You can read what St. John and Terhune thought about their Switcheroo experience in the Collaborator's Q&A.
We look forward to seeing what art and literature come into conversation in our next Switcheroo.
Liz Bradfield and Mark Temelko
Editors, www.broadsidedpress.org
Finalist:
"Among Trees" by Tammy Trendle
When trees are bare they look like
they want the sky more. He says
the difference is automatic
transmissions need fluid. I wear
too many clothes to notice. If you hold
your head at a right angle, a tree
will turn on its side for you. Sometimes
a bird gets caught in the engine
of my mouth. Words become
insects too small to see. He buzzes
inside an open hood. I worry over
oil stains on the driveway, too many
potholes in the road. He says
the problem is in the alignment
of branches. Among trees
there are two types
of color: with wings
and without.
Tammy Foster Trendle resides in Atlanta, Georgia where she works as a litigation paralegal and is mom to an amazing 4-year-old son. Her poems have appeared in several print and online publications including: storySouth, MiPOesias, Thieves Jargon, and Concelebratory Shoehorn Review. She is co-author with Pris Campbell of the chapbook, Interchangeable Goddesses (Rose of Sharon/3 Virgins Press).
Notes on Process
All Broadsided artists were invited to submit up to three pieces of work for the Switcheroo. We then asked an outside judge, Lynn Stanley, to review the submissions, choosing two that she thought would be open to literary response and would work in the Broadsided format.
One, "bird's eye," was used in our November, 2007 Switcheroo. Of "Among Trees," Stanley had this to say:
The work I've settled on was chosen for its ability to hold my gaze. I like the watery spontaneity of "Among Trees," and the feeling of humor in the nonsensical insects with their many legs and wings. Are there two faces touching, nose to nose among the bird size bugs? I like to think so. I also like that the image could swing from intimations of a summer idyll to a killer bees menace the landscape/townspeople narrative.
Lynn Stanley
(Stanley's bio)
"Among Trees" (6" h x 8 ½" w, Bister ink on paper) by Elizabeth Terhune
[ Download "Among Trees (or) The Heart is a Bee Hive" (256kb pdf file). Back to the Archives. ]
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