“Amendment 14,” 2026 Switcheroo
Collaborators’ Q&A
For the Switcheroo, Broadsided artists were invited to submit visual work that writers might respond to. We then asked Regin Igloria, the 2025 Switcheroo artist, to choose a piece he thought would be generative for writers and would work in Broadsided’s unique format. He selected Daniel Esquivia Zapata’s mixed-media piece, Word-works 1868-2022. Of his choice, Regin had this to say:
Daniel’s work immediately stood out to me, particularly because of the combination of text and image. The layering of light and dark portrayed depth exquisitely in meaning and construct. I kept returning to see more.—Regin Igloria
What surprises you about the poet’s writing in conversation with your art? Catherine’s poem refract any element of the art that made you see the piece differently?
Artist Daniel Esquivia Zapata: Wow, yes, I am genuinely surprised to encounter such powerful words. Catherine’s poem resonates strongly in a very positive way. It reflects a deep engagement with the piece, and I feel honored that she wrote a poem that enters into conversation with it. I keep returning to the line: “what worthy effort does language / not define, not commit unto a predatory censor?” and to the beautiful, powerful image at the end “a habitable shore.” Those lines expand the questions about what we can do, and have done, with language and with the law. The law exists at the intersection of language and power. After all, it is the framework that shapes and governs actions of power. What I mean by that, is that it determines what is allowed, how it is allowed, what is enforced, and what is prohibited.
I wonder what words can do in the difficult times we are living through, and I think, Well, look at their power. A big degree of violent actions, and calls for justice, are not only accompanied by words, but they are also defined by them. But only certain words carry that force: those that build discourse. In other words, words that are part of action; words that tell us which lives are valued, why something needs protection, and what we are being asked to care about. These are the words that help construct our humanity. I am a Mennonite and a pacifist, so I firmly believe on how much we can do by using this kind of language. Of course, this is not the only way such power operates. There are also discourses that destroy.
Catherine, can you talk about the experience of writing your poem in conversation with Daniel’s art, titled “Word-works 1868-2022”? What leapt out first? A particular image? A mood? A line?
Poet Catherine Wing: As the poem states, my first impression was of an opening…from a distance something like Georgia O’Keefe, many-layered, many-petaled, a site of possibility and pleasure. Of course, once you zoom in that promise is broken. The bird is dead, the words that surround it are grim: conspiracy, kidnap, injury, lynching. That’s one of the things I like most about Daniel’s piece, how the trompe l’oeil of the first impression (the flower and the bird) deteriorates into something much darker, something more like a black hole.
Daniel, what inspired Word-works 1868-2022? Did you have any specific memories, images, phrases, or anything else in mind as you created the piece?
Artist Daniel Esquivia Zapata: This is a drawing of a hummingbird from Alabama, where I was living last year. I’ve been making hummingbirds out of text for some years now, each one tied to specific texts. I use the hummingbird as a metaphor for memory and for the use of language. Usually, the text I work with comes from newspaper articles, laws, decrees, things like that. So it’s not just any language or memory, it’s the kind we use to narrate events, to frame our views, and to try to regulate behavior through law.
This drawing is an amalgamation of references: the 14th Amendment, the Emmett Till Antilynching Act, and words from Toni Morrison’s Nobel lecture. In that speech, she talks about dead and living languages, and she uses this image of language as a bird we hold in our hands; something we have the power to shape. She speaks about language that can censor, diminish, discriminate (dead) and language that can build, that is alive. There’s a lot in that lecture; it’s incredible. With this drawing, I wanted to make an image that sits with those ideas: what has been done with language, and what has been done with the law? It’s a complex history. Has it been enough? Is it enough language? ….especially when we think about the promise of equal protection under the law?
Did anything shift for you or come into new light once you saw the poem and art together on the page?
Poet Catherine Wing: The simplicity of their positioning somehow reinforces the starkness of the subject matter, which seems appropriate, blunt and without frills.
Artist Daniel Esquivia Zapata: Wow, yes, this idea of ongoing attempts through language and law, this effort to move toward an ideal, is definitely there. The poem helped me see it more clearly in that light. I really connected with the way Catherine framed these questions. There’s something very precise and powerful in how she did it.
Have you ever created a piece of work that was inspired by another medium of art before? What was that experience like for you? Why were you inspired to do so?
Poet Catherine Wing: I often use a work of art as a jumping off point for poems. It allows me to get out of my own head, beyond the dull machinations of daily life and into something marvelous, different, and strange.
Artist Daniel Esquivia Zapata: I have responded to poems before, but never had a poet respond to one of my pieces, I admire poets a lot, so I am just too excited to see this response. Regarding the experience I had before, it is always wonderful to respond to another art piece (like a poem). I had to always think deeply on the other artist’s language and structure; it is a bit like dancing with another person: you have to see their movements, feel them so you can respond, so you can continue those movements with your own language, it’s wonderful.
Have you ever had a writer respond to your work before? What was the experience like?
Artist Daniel Esquivia Zapata: This is the first time, it has been wonderful.
If this broadside were a type of weather, what would it be?
Poet Catherine Wing: Dense clouds with a low ceiling. A day better spent indoors.
Artist Daniel Esquivia Zapata: There is no present without memory.
Do you have a prompt you’d like to share for readers that they might use to engage in their own artistic practices?
Poet Catherine Wing: Usually my prompts are hopelessly complicated, involving multiple steps and a complicated tangle of random things. Here’s one I’m borrowing from poet Jason Whitmarsh which seems more straightforward: Write a series of instructions for how a piece of sculpture can learn how to move. If you choose a “mobile” sculpture (one that already moves, even if only in a limited way) write the instructions for how it might learn how to stay still.
Describe your dream “Vectorization”—where, in your wildest dreams, would you most like to see this broadside posted in the world?
Poet Catherine Wing: This will date my answer (and give an indication that I’m consuming an unhealthy amount of media) BUT if it could be rendered in bioluminescent algae in Trump’s failed reconstruction of the reflecting pool, that would be amazing. Barring that, above the water cooler at the Supreme Court’s cafeteria.
Artist Daniel Esquivia Zapata: Perhaps this is too much, but I would like this to be part of the cover of a book that delves into the power of words.
Read any good books lately?
Poet Catherine Wing: Malachi Black’s Storm Toward Morning, Elizabeth Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction.
Artist Daniel Esquivia Zapata: Ted Chiang’s Exhalation: Stories and One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad.
Seen any good art lately?
Poet Catherine Wing: There’s currently a Manet & Morisot show at the Cleveland Museum of Art that’s spectacular. Or I also really admire Jane Hammond’s works on paper—especially her botanical collages.
Artist Daniel Esquivia Zapata: Rodney McMillian: A Son of the Soil at the Columbia Museum of Art in South Carolina was a great exhibition.
Anything else you’d like to ask each other or say about this experience or your work?
Poet Catherine Wing: It’s an honor to be a part of this project, and I really just want to take a moment to enthuse about the art itself. I love its duplicity. I love that the medium is paper itself, and the paper is formed and deformed by ripping and tearing and maybe even burning. I love that there’s text on the paper and the text is the 14th Amendment, and on top of the typeface there’s handwriting. I love the handwriting and the interaction of that which seems so personal and delicate with its antithesis, the cold words of the constitution.
Artist Daniel Esquivia Zapata: Dear Catherine thank you so much for this great response, I feel honored.
Editors’ Note:
We love “The Switcheroo,” which we developed to try and give back to some artists the amazing offering they share: to take in a work of literature, and to amalgamate and respond. If we could, we’d do this more often, but it takes resources and care, and we want to do it right. When Regin Igloria chose Daniel Esquivia Zapata’s piece, we were overjoyed. There is so much to respond to, so much to choose from. The care and attention of Catherine Wing’s response moved us deeply. Particularly in this moment in history. How can we find a way to newly understand the 14th amendment of the United States Constitution so that it is vivid, living, and human? How can we think beyond the page to all the lives in this nation, human and hummingbird and beyond? These questions of relationship, of relationality, of connection and responsibility feel vital. We’re so grateful to both the artist and the poet for helping us hold a bit of time to consider them.
In Collaborative Joy,
The Editors