Call to Artists: Poetry & Collage Residency

A four-week, virtual/online residency with Kolaj Institute in March 2022

Deadline to apply: Wednesday, February 2, 2022

It says something that in the Poetry Foundation’s Glossary of Poetic Terms, “collage” is one of the few visual art terms they define. Perhaps this is because so many poets have also been collage artists. In recent years, we’ve seen exhibitions from John Ashbery and Marc Strand, whose collage “dates back to his student days at Yale in the 1950s where he studied with Josef Albers, the renowned Bauhaus artist and color theorist, and also Bernard Chaet.” Arthur Solway recalled, “Though we were eight thousand miles apart we would have weekly Skype calls, and he was always eager and excited to show me the latest batch of collages he was working on.” A 2017 book of Helen Adam’s collages, which fellow poet Robert Duncan referred to as “pleasing weird”, has sold out. Keith Waldrop, Barbara Guest, John Wieners, Norma Cole, the list is long.

This project-driven residency is open to artists and poets. Participants will work together to investigate the intersection of collage and poetry by exploring concepts of found poetry, blackout poetry, collage poems, haikus, centos, response collages, response poems, word scrambles, concrete poetry, scatter collage poems, and other poems and artwork that inhabit this world. Together we will create working definitions and document techniques. 

Guest speakers will share their practice, knowledge and experience. Portland, Oregon-based Kevin Sampsell is an editor, publisher, bookstore employee, collage artist, and author. His forthcoming book of collage art and poems, I Made an Accident, is being published by Clash Books. Renée Reizman is an interdisciplinary curator, artist and writer specializing in social practice and civic engagement. Her workshop, “Deconstructing Legalese”, uses found poetry to examine contracts and codes imposed upon us by bureaucratic systems, and reconstructs the language to reclaim our personal histories. Rod T. Boyer creates art and poetry under the moniker our thomas, exploring themes of redemption, mystery, and transformation. In Kolaj #32, his article, “Mind the Gap,” explored how collage and haiku share similar mechanisms of juxtaposition and disjunction.

In several virtual meetings over four weeks (see schedule below) and through ongoing, online discussion, artists will leave the residency with a deeper understanding of the intersection of collage and poetry. Individual participants will each create 3-5 page spreads that will be included in a forthcoming book of collage and poetry from Kolaj Institute. The pages may be entirely text, entirely images, or some combination of the two.

WHO IS THIS FOR?

Collage Artist Residencies are intended for self-motivated writers and artists, at any stage in their career, who want to develop their practice by exploring a topic or working method and collaborating with others to produce a final product. Residencies are open to any artist over the age of 21 from anywhere in the world. 

COST

The cost of the residency is $500 per artist; however, no artist will be turned away for lack of funds and the organizers will work with artists to build a financial aid package.