Amaranth Borsuk interviews local poets

To extend the conversations begun by her MIT Press volume The Book, IAS faculty member Amaranth Borsuk recently staged conversations with several local poets whose creative practice includes publishing, book arts, and performance. On July 12, she spoke with Doug Nufer, whose work includes Oulipo-style constraint based writing, and Shin Yu Pai, whose practice encompasses installation art, artists' books, and site-specific works, at The Lab at Ada's Technical Books in Capitol Hill. On August 8, she spoke with two writers affiliated with Seattle-based poetry publisher Wave Books: Joshua Beckman and Don Mee Choi. Beckman showed several of his artists' books and talked about his role as publisher as well as the way his writing practice is shaped by his background in hand-made books. Choi shared recent work involving projection and performance and discussed the way her background as an artist shapes her thinking about the page. Borsuk hopes to continue such conversations at future events, extending the dialogue about what books can be and do in the twenty-first century.