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

Limited Edition Chapbook

Room To Room: Poetry & Architecture in Conversation

by Ted Landrum, Komi Olaf, and Ingrid Ruthig

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