Collective residencies / PEDAGOGICAL INNOVATION II / Olot
KRISTINA MARIE DARLING
From Monday, 18 February 2019 to Friday, 1 March 2019
Bio
Kristina Marie Darling is the author of thirty-two books, including Look to Your Left: The Poetics of Spectacle (Akron Poetry Series, forthcoming in 2020) and DARK HORSE: Poems (C&R Press, 2018). She currently serves as Editor-in-Chief of Tupelo Press and Tupelo Quarterly, an opinion columnist at The Los Angeles Review of Books, a staff blogger at The Kenyon Review, a contributing writer at Publishers Weekly, and a freelance book critic at The New York Times Book Review.
Project
I will continue work on an essay collection called Look To Your Left: The Poetics of Spectacle. This essay collection, which is currently under contract with the University of Akron Poetry Series, interrogates the politics and power imbalances implicit in the simple act of looking. Drawing on representations of the gaze in recent poetry by women, non-binary writers, and writers of color, the book explores the poetry as a hypothetical testing ground, in which the relationship between viewer and viewed can be renegotiated. The essays explore form and technique as politically charged, a way of performing and involving the reader in alternative models of spectacle and spectatorship. My essays focus on the work of writers who have been heretofore undertheorized, including Julia Story, Laurie Sheck, Virginia Konchan, Victoria Chang, Anne Barngrover, and many others.
With gratitude to Faber
The Faber Residency is like no other program that exists for artists. When I first arrived, I was struck by both the beauty of the place and the kindness of the individuals who organized the residency. However, the most valuable aspect of my experience at Faber was the dialogue, conversations, and connections that I made with creative practitioners and educators working outside of my chosen discipline.
From the very beginning, our conversations over wonderful dinners were wide-ranging and thought-provoking. We discussed politics, pedagogy, creativity, and how they connected to our own practice as working artists and practitioners in the field. I’ve learned more from being part of this community than I would have in a classroom, by far.
As a result of the uninterrupted time and space to work on my project – truly, a gift – I have completed a draft of my textbook for poetry teachers, which is under contract with the University of Akron Press. This draft is even stronger for the insights of others, and the ongoing dialogue between the educators and teaching artists in our group.
As a result of the connections I’ve made with artists working at Faber, I’m looking forward to interviewing fellow resident Erica Buist for my weekly column at The Kenyon Review Online, and continuing the conversation beyond Faber, and will also continue to bring the dialogue and insights of the other resident artists into my everyday practice.