Wednesday, November 14, 2018

Room To Room: Poetry & Architecture in Conversation (a limited edition chapbook)

Limited Edition Chapbook

Room To Room: Poetry & Architecture in Conversation




Three genre-jumping poets with a background in architecture have joined together to exchange poems and thoughts about the architecture of poetry and the poetry of architecture.

ARKITEXWERKS (2018) 4 1/2″w x 11″h, 100 numbered & signed copies of this limited-edition chapbook were printed with archival pigment inks on 28 lb. acid-free archival Mohawk Superfine Eggshell paper, wrapped in 100% rag vellum endpapers and a cover of Strathmore 300 watercolour paper, then hand-sewn with waxed linen thread.

available while supplies last for $10 via Plug In ICA (online or in-store)
or Knife | Fork | Book (in Toronto) 
or Ingrid Ruthig (who edited & made this wonderful little book)

Link here to Video of my portion of this Archi-Poetry event.
 
My contributions to this document, include 2 poems: "Reversible Destiny 2", an archi-poem homage to Madeline Gins made by sampling text from "Procedural Architecture" - the middle chapter of Architectural Body (U. Alabama Press, 2002) by Arakawa/Gins;
and, my manifesto (or "__ifesto") on Archi-Poetry - which I'm happy to share here:

archi-poetry makes room for poetry and architecture to meet

archi-poetry throws them together, an embrace - in question
 
archi-poems are heuristic word towers, hopeful but flammable
 
if architecture is for everyone and poetry is universal, then...
      archi-poetry is doubly open - a double opening?

archi-poetry is human, but liminal and infrasubjective
 
archi-poetry is imperfect, incomplete - we're in it together
 
i found archi-poetry on a bookstore mezzanine, reading
     Louis Sullivan - and you?
 
more than we know, poetry depends on the art of reading
 
archi-poetry is a collaboration always under construction
     and ever in need of repair
 
archi-poetry is a hammer and claw, rebuilding rebuilding
 
archi-poetry experiments with strange and familiar fragments
 
archi-poetry is a multi-story labyrinth with paper-thin wings
 
archi-poetry built into situations, situations calling for poetry
 
archi-poetry comes from within and without, a porous archive
 
i found archi-poetry browsing in the library, pacing left, right
     left of Gertrude Stein, right of John Cage
 
archi-poetry is hybrid inquiry, finding/making connections
     reading/writing openings, beginnings and rules, bending
     and breaking rules, responding to sources in question
 
archi-poetry is a cosmic synthesizer improvising across scales
 
music drama doubt desire, the foundations of archi-poetry
 
archi-poetry precedes us - we awake in its wake
 
i found archi-poetry in Aristotle and the ur-flaw of Lucretius
     in the Electricity, the Table and Door of Francis Ponge
 
archi-poetry happens between lines and line breaks, breaking
     exquisite collage of plans and sections, in the making
 
i found archi-poetry in Duchamp and the Theory of Sediment
 
archi-poetry is a festival of genre-jumping pandemonium
     rhythms of urgency and calm in multifarious crossings
 
archi-poetry raises questions, readers bringing more to the table
     layering, spilling-over concerns, making room for more
     in the architecture of poetry and poetry of architecture

                                          
— Ted Landrum, 2018