Poetic Collaboration
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First cherry blossom
this very moment a good day -Basho translation Wind carries the horizon someplace else -MS Farming tumbleweeds instead of something useful -IWS The lone hitchhiker I'd never stop for -MS Scream when I see you thought I was alone in the house -IWS Too hot on my tongue I eat more chile -MS Cool jazz spills out into the sweltering street. -MS Opening a window cicadas sing us to sleep -IWS Lightening strike-- the whole neighborhood blacked out -MS Cozy in their den Skunks under the house -IWS Late at night lamp’s red shade illuminates my grudge -MS Hidden gods under my skirt When I left home -IWS Sutra wrapping paper, I tear a bit -MS Floating in the mikvah made me a woman -IWS Autumn even it's syllables sound lonely -MS Can the trees hear when leaves crunch underfoot -IWS Stillness just the cat snoring first snow -MS In the recurring dream the house has even more rooms -MS A horned figure in the dark outside or just the fire? -IWS Falling asleep, the pirate's ship unloads its treasure -MS Surprise in the box the first egg of spring -IWS Writing in my journal, startle when offered coffee -MS Summer evening the sky is pink and blue coyotes yip. -IWS Rinsing the brush to add colors of sunset -MS Sinking into a hot bath the wind howls against the window. -IWS Punishing the wooden saint turning his face to the wall -MS An old man stares a blank piece of pine across the years. -IWS Praying in the car again fuzzy dice dangle -MS Everything dies back slowly falling to the ground a walk in the park. -IWS A child’s red mitte left behind -MS Silent snow little footprints lead away -IWS New Year's Day, craving Japanese delicacies -MS Seaweed floats in the soup, more hungry patrons -MS Why does the desert feel like the ocean? -IWS Globe willows greening up by the river rapids -MS You don't return another spring missed. -IWS |
About Miriam Sagan & Isabel Winson-Sagan
Miriam Sagan is a Santa Fe based writer, with over twenty five books. She has had writer’s residencies in the national parks, sculpture gardens, and in Iceland. These include Everglades National Park, Petrified Forest, Andrews Experimental Forest in the Cascades, and Gullkistan Residency for Creative People. She received a Lannan Foundation Marfa residency, and has been at Yaddo, MacDowell, and the Colorado Art Ranch among numerous other places. She writes extensively about place and ecology, and essays and poems are collected in SEVEN PLACES IN AMERICA: A Poetic Sojourn. She does text installation, and was the co-curator of a show at Albuquerque’s 516 Gallery combining poetry and sculpture. Most recently, she installed a poem on sand on Miami’s South Beach as part of a residency at the Betsy Hotel’s Writer’s Room. Sagan has received a Santa Fe Mayor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts and a New Mexico Literary Arts Poetry Gratitude Award. She holds a B.A. in English from Harvard University and an M.A. in creative writing from Boston University. Isabel Winson-Sagan is the builder and manager of a Tiny House at Browncastle Ranch in Santa Fe, New Mexico where she works in a family business consortium that includes solar energy and tourism. She has studied traditional European woodcarving with master Bulgarian carver Ivan Dimitrov for almost a decade. She is an art student at Santa Fe Community College and holds a B.A. with honors in Religious Studies/ Anthropology from the University of New Mexico. Her photography, suminagashi, and collages have appeared in several print and electronic magazines, including The Santa Fe Literary Review, Truck, and Rogue Agent. Her two books, in collaboration with poet Miriam Sagan, are the e-book “Swimming in Reykjavik” (The Moon Press) and the forthcoming “Spilled Ink” for which she did the typography and design. As part of this continuing mother/daughter collaboration, Winson-Sagan has been an artist in residence at Wildacres in North Carolina, at a printmaking residency at Herekeke Arts Center in New Mexico, and for a short term guest residency at SIM House in Iceland. "We are a a creative mother/daughter team, Maternal Mitochondria. We are recently back from Japan, where we did a text, video and suminagashi (Japanese marbling) installation in an old grain silo at Kura Studio, Itoshima, Fukuoka. We share a studio in rural New Mexico outside of Santa Fe, and our studio practice is based on printing, collage, fabric arts, and poetry. Renga seemed a natural fit. Miriam learned it from Elizabeth Searle Lamb, known as the first lady of American haiku. Isabel can read Japanese, and takes the lead on translation. It is an old tradition to start with a haiku from a master, and this also let us avoid the debate of who would open. We are currently working on a renga-derived text which will be installed on a geo-cache pathway of recycled metal spirit houses for Santa Fe Skies RV Park and a crowd-sourced installation in Santa Fe's Railyard Park. Find us at: https://maternalmitochondria.com/" |
