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inyourface consists of poems written primarily
by my E-205 Poetry Writing students fall semester (2002). During
the summer of 2002, I had received a mail order catalogue selling
terrifyingly (and alluringly cheap) blank masks. Because the
white surface of these masks looked like blank sheets of paper,
it was not surprising that I came up with the idea of "tattooing"
poems on them.
Initially, I thought students could write poems about faces directly
on the masks; however, when the masks arrived, I discovered they
were quite flimsy. (I tried affixing some transfers and decoupage-y
things, but they were ugly disasters.) As well, what if students
had handwriting as illegible as mine? So I decided to mount the
Minimalist Voodoo Masks on clear sheets of plexi-glass and position
printed poems below the faces. The basic effect I was after was
heads on pikes down a university hallway. Students (and other BSU
English majors, faculty, staff and friends) were then invited in
the fall to write poems about a face. The poem could be in
any style, partake of any tradition, but had to fit on one page.
Students in my class wrote and re-wrote. By December I had
received approximately 30 poems which I then passed on to Idaho's
Writer in Residence, Jim Irons. Irons, who had graduated from
BSU with a BA in English and who had obtained his MA from San Francisco
State University, currently teaches Creative Writing at the College
of Southern Idaho in Twin Falls. Irons selected the eleven
poems that appear in the exhibition.
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