Paper, Pop-Ups and Poetry

*Click the images to see THE WORDS in ACTION.

Works on this page are from Foray: An Imaginative Conversation with the Future (2021-2023), a collaboration between Halifax-based writer Sue Goyette and myself. It was a research funded project with interactive pop-ups navigated by poetry. Pop-ups are linked to children’s literature due to there inherent sense of wonder and discovery. However, when applied to poetry and the meaning making it instigates—a literary process that expands within concentrated, spare phrases—there’s much to explore with paper constructions that unfold and refold meaning. The project offered one way to move forward within the current geopolitical strife and concerns for the environment, acknowledging the personal and collective losses we have and continue to endure. It included the development of community-based workshops, a paper engineering course that I took at Penland School of Craft with Colette Fu and Beatrice Coron, plus a residency that Sue and I both participated in at Ross Creek Centre for the Arts.

*Much gratitude to the Canada Council for the Arts and their support of this project.