Monday Muse: Fleda Brown's 'ConTEXTure'

How far can small words go 

toward making sense of our lives?

~ Fleda Brown, Poet

While doing some research, I serendipitously came across "ConTEXTure: A Conversation Between Artists in Two Forms". Comprising more than 30 "companion pieces", which were exhibited in 2010 at The Dennos Museum Center, Traverse City, Michigan, the project "pushes the limits of language and image", opening each artist to new possibilities of expression.

Listen as poet and writer Fleda Brown, Poet Laureate of Delaware from 2001 to 2007, and sculptor Bill Allen discuss their marvelous collaboration, which they describe as "an artistic conversation" that impels them to "look for points of entry into the other's work": 

This project was not the first in which Brown has collaborated with another artist. She also wrote a series of poems, "Einstein on Mercer Street", commissioned by Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble for bass baritone and chamber ensemble. The poems are in Brown's collection Breathing In, Breathing Out (Anhinga Press, 2002). Composer Kevin Puts had earlier set Brown's poetry to music but for "Einstein", as he explains, he engaged in "real collaboration from the ground up." Hear a sample.

Brown's most recent poetry collection is No Need of Sympathy (BOA Editions, 2013), which was nominated for the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award.

Professor Emerita at the University of Delaware, Brown is the recipient of a number of awards, including a Pushcart Prize, the Felix Pollak Prize (2007), and the Philip Levine Prize (2001). She also has been a finalist for the National Poetry Series.

Fleda Brown's Poems, Books, Blog

Fleda Brown's "Translation" at How a Poem Happens, April 8, 2012

Listen to Brown reviews of poetry at Michigan Writers on the Air.

Also of interest: "Fleda Brown on Bill's Clay Figures" at The Georgia Review Blog, October 8, 2013, and "Michigander Monday: Fleda Brown", Interview at Jumping the Candlestick Blog, May 7, 2012