April 23rd: "Word Play" Artist and Writer Presentation at The Firehouse Art Center

SOUTH GALLERY: “WORD PLAY”

A MONTH OF POETRY COLLABORATION

ARTIST AND WRITER PRESENTATION: APRIL 23- 3PM-4PM

The Firehouse Art Center Writers Group and Artist Member Community team up for an exhibit that celebrates the connection between visual arts and the written word. Ten artist/writer pairs have worked to create a written work of art and a visual piece of art. The pair decides who creates and who responds leading to often unexpected results that push each participant out of their comfort zone.
PAIRS
Ana Balzan and Emily Perez
Joyanna Gittings and Deborah Kelly
Jana Hanavan and Riley Ann
Elaine Waterman and Jen Stewart
Kathy Hall and Val Szarek
Betsy Anderson and Ursula Mains
Sue Hagedorn and Ryan Forbes
Kylee Covilli and Jean Hulktrans
Monica Carrol and Natalie Scarlett
Neva Hall and Marisa Tirado
Terri Krause and Carrie Faye Thompson
Tyrell Coover Osborn and Matt Maenpaa

Making a Broadside with The Denver Quarterly & InterOcean Studio

I was so honored to have my poem, “Gladiolus” chosen as a winner by The Denver Quarterly for their Front Range Poets broadside contest. In early November, I got to visit InterOcean Studio in Denver and work the letterpress with paper artist, Rhiannon Alpers, to create a limited run of beautiful handmade broadside prints. It was a phenomenal experience, and I’m so pleased with how they turned out. If you’d like a copy, they’re $20, available for order from InterOcean Studio , or directly from me (contact me by email).

Interview at Colorado Poets Center

It was great to get to talk to Kathryn Winograd of the Colorado Poet’s Center about Madonna, Complex! Check out her insightful interview in the March 2022 CPC newsletter.

“KW: You love words; obviously. You love names of places, paintings, people. Yes, you’re a poet and don’t all poets, but you show a wide and beautiful vocabulary: tessellation, bougainvillea, lahmacun, satsuma. I guess I’m sensitive to this because I get that darn free “Grammarly” and, every week, it annoyingly “shares” a “report” on my “unique” word usage. Do your words just pop out as you write? Do you research words? Use a thesaurus? Give us some advice on how you find the “bread and butter” for your poems.

JSF: I don’t research words, and I try not to use a thesaurus much because I think if the word is unfamiliar to me, or something I have to reach too far for, it’s probably not the right word for the poem. That said, there are times when I’ll use a thesaurus because I want a synonym that meets the rhythmic demands of a line. The words you mention here are the kind of thing I pick up and jot down in my journal because they capture some specificity of a place. Naming things carefully is one of the primary jobs of a poet, I think. Many of the words that arrive in my poems come through traveling quite a bit in countries where English is not the primary language. Picking up specific names of plants, roads, foods, places feels to me like collecting souvenirs, just like keeping train tickets or postcards or pressing leaves into a journal. They’re evidence of having been somewhere.”
— Colorado Poets Center, issue #31

Review of Madonna, Complex at Mom Egg Review

I loved the deep dive that reviewer Sherre Vernon did when reviewing Madonna, Complex for Mom Egg Review. Check out her precise explanation of the book’s title, and the full review at Mom Egg.

In the audacity of its title, Madonna, Complex asks that we come equipped for exegesis. Before we read her first line of poetry, Fueston gives us her own three-part promise for this collection: first, with a comma, she signals that the poems she’s gathered here will center on motherhood; next, in her associative reference to the Oedipus and Electra complexes, that she will be unpacking a psychological fixation, one at the core of her understanding of attachment and love; finally, she tells us, (Madonna), that through this journey we will navigating the forms and language of the Church. Two words well spent.