Book / Chapbook / Poems / Essays / Reviews
Book
Handiwork
Slope Editions (March 2012)
Handiwork explores the relationship between writing and torture—the ways poetry can wound us, and the ways it wrestles with language itself. Combining constraint-based writing with fragmented lyricism, the book considers the social and cultural role of the writer with respect to history and memory, and what gets lost in the transmission of trauma from one generation to the next.
“A New Vessel,” one of the poems from the manuscript, was selected by Ilya Kaminsky as winner of the 2011 Gulf Coast Prize. It appears online. Other poems from Handiwork are online at The Society for Curious Thought and The Destroyer, as well as Cutbank.
Reviews:
- Microreview, Anna Ross, Boston Review 37.5 (Sept./Oct 2012). [Re-blogged at Harriet]
- “Handiwork, by Amaranth Borsuk,” Angela Veronica Wong, The Aviary (May 2012).
- “Handiwork,” Irene Koronas, Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene (May 2012).
Between Page and Screen
Siglio Press (April, 2012)
In collaboration with programmer Brad Bouse
Between Page and Screen is a book of poems that contains no text, only stark black-and-white geometric shapes and a web address leading to betweenpageandscreen.com, where the reader follows instructions to display the book on his or her webcam. Our software detects the square markers in the book and projects poems mapped to the surface of the page. Because the animations move with the book, they appear to inhabit “real” three-dimensional space—a kind of digital pop-up book.
The poems—a series of cryptic letters between P and S, two lovers struggling to define the bounds of their relationship, do not exist on either page or screen, but in the augmented space between them opened up by the reader.
Originally created as a limited-edition hand-made artist’s book, Between Page and Screen, is now available from Siglio Press (25% discount with code SPINTO), Amazon, and through DAP. For more information, visit www.betweenpageandscreen.com.
Reviews:
- “Between Page and Screen,” Abraham Avnisan, Rain Taxi Review of Books (October 2012).
- “Mirror Work,” Ander Monson, American Letters and Commentary 23, Special Issue: The Future of the Book (August 2012).
- “Between Page and Screen,” Peter Szatmary, Phi Kappa Phi Forum (Fall 2012).
- “A Useful Pageant,” Anna Lena Phillips, American Scientist 100:3 (May-June 2012), 267.
- “Seen/Scene, Sheet, and Screen: Reading Amaranth Borsuk and Brad Bouse’s Between Page and Screen, Timothy David Orme, Diagram 12.2 (May 2012).
- “May Book List: Between Page and Screen,” Hey, Small Press!, May 8, 2012.
- “Between Page and Screen: A Digital Pop-up Book About Love, Maria Popova, Brain Pickings, April 30, 2012.
- “Coolest Book Ever,” Cassia / Muse of What, April 19 2012.
- “Why I Love Augmented Reality Right Now,” Daniel Donahoo, Geek Dad Column, Wired Magazine, March 27, 2012.
Chapbook
Tonal Saw
Chapbook (The Song Cave, 2010)
This chapbook-length poem in thirty parts uses language from a religious tract that was left on my doorstep ten years ago. Vertical slashes score the source text, sawing through the language of religious fervor to write a religion of poetry that worships language itself.
Poems
- “Sonnet 103 and Translator’s Note,” The Sonnets: Translating and Rewriting Shakespeare
(Nightboat Books, 2012) - Poet of the Month, Selections from Handiwork.
- Elective Affinities, Three poems from Handiwork.
- The Offending Adam: Three poems from Handiwork.
- InDigest Podcast: “The Smell of Rain On Surfaces.”
- Harp & Altar: “Pomegranate: Rimon’s Rhyme” and “In Which Things That Hurt Us Are Stored For Winter.”
- PEN American Blog: “What Is Withheld.”
- Gulf Coast: “A New Vessel.”
- The Society for Curious Thought: “Four poems from Handiwork.”
- The Destroyer: “Blind Contour.”
- Seam Ripper, a special issue of Delirious Hem on poetry and fashion: “Idem the Shame; A Valentine for Gertrude Stein.”
- Eleven Eleven: “Wood Nexuses I” and “Baking Blind.”
- Kloaka: “Obsession Session,” collaboration with Slovak writer, artist, and DJ Zuzana Husárová. Sound poem available on Mixcloud.
- Action, Yes!: Selections from Excess Exhibit (with Kate Durbin).
- Drunken Boat: Selections from My Hypertropes, translations and transversions of Paul Braffort (with Gabriela Jauregui).
- Poet of the Month: Selections from My Hypertropes, translations and transversions of Paul Braffort (with Gabriela Jauregui).
- Improbable Object / Intersection(s): Selections from My Hypertropes, translations and transversions of Paul Braffort (with Gabriela Jauregui).
Additional recent poems can be found in print in FIELD, Denver Quarterly, Colorado Review, and The Moe Green Poetry Discussion Podcast May 7, 2010.
Essays
“Rebooking the Mix.” Guest Post, Remixthebook.com, April 2012.
“The Upright Script: Words in Space and on the Page.” Journal of Electronic Publishing, special
issue, Digital Poetry (2011).
“Transverting the Bestiary: Translating Paul Braffort’s Mes Hypertropes.” With Gabriela Jauregui. Aufgabe 10 (2011): 262-265.
“‘There Have Been Pictures Here’: Spirit Photography and Projective Mediumship in H.D.’s Tribute to Freud.” Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory 10.2 (2010), special issue, H.D. and the Archaeology of Religion: 65-82.
“‘Ma belle machine à écrire:’ Poet and Typewriter in the work of Blaise Cendrars.” Writing Technologies 2.1 (2008): n. pag. (24 pages).
Reviews
“Up Against the Line: Translating the Silent Image. Virginie Lalucq and Jean-Luc Nancy’s Fortino Sámano, trans. Cynthia Hogue and Sylvain Gallais.” American Letters & Commentary 24 (2013).
“Derek Beaulieu’s Fractal Economies.” Lana Turner: A Journal of Poetry and Opinion 5 (2012). [Reprinted in Galatea Resurrects #20]
“Erica Baum, Dog Ear.” Lana Turner: A Journal of Poetry and Opinion 4 (2011). [Reprinted in Galatea Resurrects #20]
“Robin Schiff’s Revolver.” Lana Turner: A Journal of Poetry and Opinion 2 (2009): 295-296. [Reprinted in Galatea Resurrects #20]
“Deborah M. Mix, A Vocabulary of Thinking: Gertrude Stein and Contemporary North American Women’s Innovative Writing.” Women’s Studies, 37:6 (2008): 750-754.
“Twist of Address by Spencer Selby.” Slope 25 (2008): n. pag. (4 pages).