Citizen Poet

Originally finished and exhibited in 2017, remixed in 2020. Based on a poem by Lisa Robertson, this retake on belonging and boundaries imagines poetry as a capitalist salve.

Robertson writes writes about what must be refused in order to create the borders that make identity possible. Against the refusals that create the state she poses the project of intimate conversation and poetry (“bodies assert their incalculable distance”). Poetry is the speech of citizenship. Pigeons flap, friends clasp hands, a pair of strangers dissolve on the metro, ghost cars, lovers don’t mind the rain, tea sipping, sunset at the bridge. As if they were coming back to life.