Physical Texts with Jennifer Still

  • Thursday, May 24, 2018
  • 6:30pm – 8:00pm
  • Duke of Kent Legion, 227 McDermot Avenue

When does a word become its materiality and a materiality become its word? This Theory and Beer will be a discussion of the animated, three-dimensional, physical possibilities and artificial distinctions between text and the material world. The conversation will begin with a group reading from Silk Poems by Jen Bervin, an artist and poet whose research-driven interdisciplinary works weave together art, writing, science and life in a complex, elegant way. Other matter-text fusions will include Laurie Anderson’s “Chalkroom,” Jen Bervin’s Tactile Language, and the PBS Electric Company’s “ING Song.”

Readings/visuals will be provided in hard copy that evening.

Free, everyone welcome!

  • Jennifer Still explores the intersections of language and material forms. Her third book, Comma (2017), is a representation of silence and pause through poems assembled by hand. Still has mentored writers as Writer-in-Residence at the Winnipeg Public Library, the U of M, the U of W and the Banff Centre for the Arts. A mentee in MAWA’s 2017 Foundation Mentorship Program, she recently projected a poem onto a planetarium dome, threaded a light beam out of a page and transposed a scroll over a prairie field. She is currently at work composing a book-length tactile poem using a light source, a honeybee text and a sewing needle.