ASU is well-represented this year in Collaborative Vision: The Poetic Dialogue Project, a nationally recognized effort in which poets and visual artists collaborate in pairs to create works of art using multiple media.
All together, four of the project’s 31 poets are current or former ASU faculty members, said Lois Roma-Deeley, an ASU master’s of fine arts graduate and former lecturer who conceived the project with Chicago-based visual artist Beth Shadur after meeting at an artists’ retreat several years ago.
Roma-Deeley said that she, current ASU English professors Cynthia Hogue and Beckian F. Goldberg and former ASU and UA professor Peggy Shumaker participated in the project as creative writers.
The Poetic Dialogue Project is in its third installment and is on exhibition at the Chicago Cultural Center until April 15. The first two installments, in 2004 and 2005, had poets respond to previous work by the visual artist or asked the to artist create a piece based upon an already-written poem, Roma-Deeley said. But the new exhibition imposed no such restrictions on the artists’ interaction.
“This was a true collaborative effort,” she said.
Shadur assembled the group of 31 visual artists, while Roma-Deeley said she used her creative writing contacts in Arizona and elsewhere to help locate poets interested in the Poetic Dialogue Project’s artistic vision.
“I have, for a lack of a better term, ‘curated’ the poetry,” she said.
During her time at ASU, Roma-Deeley said she was associated with many ASU writing professors on a personal and professional level. Her impression of the University as “a vortex of creativity, innovation and energy” led her to seek out former University colleagues with an open mind toward taking part in this year’s collaboration.
Hogue, the English professor whose poem “Stones” inspired the work of Yugoslavian visual artist Mirjana Ugrinov, said she and Roma-Deeley have been friends since being on the same doctoral dissertation committee years earlier. Hogue said she was asked to participate and recommend other writing professors with the time and talent to contribute.
Hogue agreed to participate, and said she entreated poets with styles varying from experimental and post-modern to nature poetry because the Poetic Dialogue Project’s creative diversity excited to her.
“The range of the works and the variety and the depth of the exchanges was really extraordinary,” Hogue said.
Writing based on dialogue with a fellow artist, as opposed to a memory or landscape that cannot respond to the poet’s thoughts, created a synergy between different mediums that enhanced the artistic process for everyone involved, she said.
“Where we collaborated [was on] ideas,” Hogue said. “We really discussed ideas, and then we wrote an artistic statement together.”
Roma-Deeley said she would consider the Poetic Dialogue Project a success if it has pushed artists to look at their own imagination in relation to other artists’ imaginations.
“It’s kind of a risky process, [but] it’s exhilarating, … and one which we hope to explore further,” she said.
Roma-Deeley said she was not sure exactly what lies in the future of the Poetic Dialogue Project, but she and Shadur may discuss the possibility of publishing a book when Shadur visits Roma-Deely’s Scottsdale home later in the year.
However the project manifests itself next time around, Roma-Deeley said it’s very likely ASU faculty and alumni will be largely represented once again.
“I can’t help but think that all the creative energy coming out of ASU will be involved in the next incarnation of this, whatever it may be,” she said.
Reach the reporter at trabens@asu.edu.
