Poetry, unbound.
Ours Poetica - A Photopoetic Collaboration
Jenni Frank
Professional wordsmith full of curiosity, I am lucky to be on a lifelong journey with words. What will happen next?
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It's nearly time for Ours Poetica to go public. I'm looking for possible gallery spaces and publishers. Contact me with options...
My Collaborators Include
Nate Christensen
Welcome to Ours Poetica
A simple Poetry Foundation search for Ars Poetica will reveal how many writers of note have penned their own guides to poetry – defining for themselves and their readers what this form can hold. And what better format for explaining poetry than a poem? As a collective, we are often deliriously self-referential. But that closed circle of “self reflecting back to self” felt for me like it was starting to collapse inward, creating yet another box for my words. And it turns out, my words aren’t always well-suited to boxes.
The Vision
Sometimes my words like movement; they crave touch; they are very fond of partnership, and it only recently came to my attention that they enjoy being photographed. In that case, what better to do than let them out of their boxes? Introduce them to enthusiastic collaborators and see what they inspire?
Together with a posse of muses and some abundantly talented photographers, my words have become our words – a poetica that redefines, leaving the page behind for something more engaging.
Horace and his Ars Poetica sought to set us on a predictable poetic path – inflicting structure on what feels to me like language’s most liberating outlet. I don’t blame him – the old adage “those who can’t do, teach” suited him perfectly. As he said himself, “Writing nothing myself, I’ll teach the office and function/where to find resources, what feeds and forms the poet/what’s right, what’s not, where virtue and error lead.” No offense to Horace, but teachers like him have sought to put poetry in boxes (on paper, bound in motionless tomes) for centuries and that is a lesson I invite everyone to unlearn.
Contact Me
Reach out to share your thoughts or inquiries.