Johanna Featherstone of The Red Room Company discusses alternative approaches to publishing poetry [13.06.2011]
Like all of The Red Room Company projects, we explore how poetry can be created by and published on the inner and outer surfaces of ourselves and our worlds. So, we’re conscious that the mode and place of publication is always reflective of and related to the themes of our projects or the places our projects transform. We’re not interested in gimmicks or simplistically publishing poems on materials for the sake of being different. Rather, we embody a material or imprint a surface only if it reflects the substance of the poem or provides a new layer of meaning to the poets' words.
The Red Room Company’s major project for 2011 is Clubs and Societies; a large-scale project that uses poets and poetry to engage with a vast array of clubs and societies from across Australia. The project works by pairing poets with clubs over a period of four months. The poets become a sort of artist-in-residence of the club, attending meetings and events, immersing themselves in the day-to-day operations of the club. In this way they slowly become familiar with the ideas and practices, obsessions and jargon, people and politics. They learn to speak the club’s language. With this language they then compose a work of poetry. For example, the Astronomical Society we’re working with may publish their poem in the form of an astronomical map; the Soup Club may write their poem as a recipe.
We are encouraging the poets to allow their practice to be radically influenced by the group with which they are paired. As such, the works created might take the form of conventional poems, but also performances, installations and fabricated objects. Each club and poet will be carefully chosen for the creative potential of their partnership. Alongside this element will be a research-based project that maps the landscape of Australian clubs – both figuratively and literally – creating interactive multimedia works representing the fruits of this research. Through this component, clubs that have not been paired with a poet-in-residence can still be involved in the project, contributing information at their clubs, their members and even their own creative work. At the end of the projects the commissioned works will be read, performed and exhibited in a public event or series of events that showcase the vitality of contemporary Australian poetry and the diversity of Australian clubs and societies. Currently involved is a soup club, an astronomy society, a rehab centre of Indigenous men and many more. Some of the work we do is in correctional centres and high schools. It is in these places that our projects take on another life as students and inmates recreate our public works and publications using the materials at hand. For example, a school in South Australia recently worked with one of our poets on a unit of ‘guerrilla poetry’. One student, Emma Kalusche from Pedare Christian College SA, wrote the poem below in tomato sauce on a BBQ.
Our schools' programs works directly with established contemporary Australian poets to both excite students and teachers to read Australian poetry and write their own. The schools' program also, and this is the case with every single one of our projects, pays poets professional fees for their time and work, including the commissioning of a new work. Commissioned work has no line limitations or thematic restriction. It offers poets a paid opportunity to create new work that is both a gift to the school they are resident in and also an addition to their own collected works.
Since The Red Room Company’s inception in 2003, we’ve always valued the object; the tactility of a poem once it’s out of the head, off the tongue and searching for a place to place itself. Each of our projects produce an object or publication. We also make a point of using audio and video as a means to archive our work and introduce work to new audiences or those who are unable to attend our public events. Our collection of audio files is free and extensive. It continues to be a fantastic online resource that provides content for community and commercial radio such as our partnership with Radio National for Sea Things and, next, Clubs and Societies.
The Clubs and Societies Headquarters
Home of The Red Room Company Club Basement, 70 George St, The Rocks NSW 2000.
Audio and video have also been the inspiration for our projects. It’s obvious that audio is a large part of what we do, knowing that the voice was the first space in which a poem inhabited and turned to form – be it whispers in the atmosphere or songs on the wind. Voice continues to be something that draws audiences to our live events. People want to see and hear the poets in the real. Our first audio piece was a collage of poets' voices titled The Epic Poem, 2003. More recently, a partnership with the University of Western Sydney where we created a series of television shows that profiled a range of contemporary Australian poets resulted in The Wordshed. Field Notes #1 was a one-off video poem on the Sydney poet, Jennifer Maiden.
As anyone reading these words will know, there are many individuals and collectives publishing poetry in both traditional forms and new forms. Some of these publications or projects are ineffective and serve to turn poetry into a fad, fashion or worse make it cool. Others, such as Vagabond Press, Papertiger Media or Mascara Literary Review use new technologies of writing in persuasive and engaging ways.
For the rest of 2011, The Red Room Company has a Clubhouse where we are hosting a series of talks, poetry readings, performances and exhibitions of poetry objects. We want to use this space to profile and support some other groups' poetry works. From June to November, our Club will run a series of events linked to the Clubs and Societies project: pony rides, poetry readings, stargazing and other such things. We also have a Club cinema. The Club offers time and space for learning, loafing, writing, reading and laughing. We’re inviting people or groups to host their own events or meetings in our space and use our exhibition area to showcase some of their creations. The Clubhouse, I hope, reflects The Red Room Company’s commitment to collaboration, quality poetry and poetry inventions. More than anything, you will be astounded by our creativity and efficiency when it comes to urns and biscuits. Come have a look.
Here’s a poem by Johanna
Millionaires' bid for Triabunna
Two high forces (Cameron and Wood) buy bold:
Their pockets
that might otherwise have been logged
Johanna Featherstone established The Red Room Company in 2003. Her poetry has featured in journals such as Quadrant, Mascara, HEAT and the Best Australian Poems. In 2006 she created a series of literary TV shows, The Wordshed, in partnership with The University of Western Sydney where she is a research associate. Johanna is an honorary associate of The University of Sydney’s School of Letters Arts and Media. She received a fellowship from the St James Ethics Center in 2008. Her chapbook, Felt, was released in 2010 by Vagabond Press. She was most recently a resident writer at Bundanon and a guest at the 2010 Struga Poetry Evenings (Macedonia).
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