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This project is inspired by Paulo Freire’s assertion that “There is no true word that is not at the same time a praxis. Thus, to speak a true word is to transform the world” (from Pedagogy of the Oppressed). Freire believed strongly that language does not simply reflect the world, it creates the world.
I see poetry as one of the “truest” forms of language, with the greatest potential to “transform the world.” It is precisely poetry’s general lack of rhetoric that makes it so honest and so powerful.
This project is also an examination of public space and what relevance public space has to creative practice today.
There are several steps in the process:
1 – A poet chooses a public place that has some sort of personal meaning to her/him.
2 – I interview the poet in the chosen place. We talk about the potential of poetry to alter our understanding of place, and question the relevancy of public space to creative practice.
3 – The poet writes a poem in response to the chosen place.
4 – I put the poem into a visual/verbal form in the chosen place.
You will find on this website documentation of all of the above steps: interviews, photographs of visual interventions, and, of course, poems.