“At Cape Perpetua”
Collaborators’ Q&A
What inspired you to bring your work to Broadsided?
Poet Lex Runciman: As a long-time amateur fan of visual art, I continue to be intrigued by the ways that long looking and contemplative reading can echo and overlap. And as a writer, I’ve often enough tried to write about what happens in the act of looking. So, broadsides have always held my interest: they are meant to be collaborative, meant to be seen for themselves, as works of collaborative art. It feels to me like a great privilege to be part of such a collaboration. And of course, one has to be curious about what words might provoke in visual response.
What drew you to create a visual response to this poem, in particular?
Artist Sandra Vega: I really enjoyed the imagery/visuals you get when reading this poem. I thought it was a tranquil piece with beautiful storytelling.
How did this poem come to be?
Poet Lex Runciman: Almost all that I write can be understood as a response to a some question or series of questions. And among them, “what happened?” may be foremost. Cape Perpetua is a headland that rises steeply from the Pacific–a real place on the Central Oregon coast. And it’s possible to walk a very switch-backy trail to its summit, where one finds a Civilian Conservation Corp shelter built of native rock. The view can be glorious, or nothing but gray and mist (or wetter), depending on the weather. My wife and I have walked that trail several times, finding that it’s a steeper and higher ascent each time. It can be a slog, but quite amazing as the fog clears, if it clears. Driving Hwy. 101 (the north / south road that hugs the Oregon coast), it’s too easy to miss the turn that will take you to this trail… too easy to be in a hurry elsewhere. What would we see if we walked that ascent today? What have we seen heretofore?
How did this image come to be?
Artist Sandra Vega: In my exploration of self and identity, I found my way to beetles and other insects to represent my roots, grounding me to earth/nature. The piece itself is a cyanotype of a crushed insect along with a digital drawing of injured or damaged hands superimposed on the photograph. The withered hands are reaching, almost wanting to caress the crushed insect. It’s a representation of searching, yearning, and experiencing.
What did you think an artist would pick up on from your poem?
Poet Lex Runciman: Part of the delight here is absolutely not knowing–understanding that whatever the artist chose would be highly individual. The wait to see the answer to this question has been more or less intense.
Does the artist’s response make you see the poem differently?
Poet Lex Runciman: Yes! Honestly, seeing a cyanotype was a surprise… it’s all blue! Quickly enough, it’s also clear that any notion of illustrating or echoing the poem’s images has been set aside in favor of something else. What’s that something else? Two hands, seeming to offer the poem–as a gift? One hopes. The poem’s words can’t be read from a distance, nor is its form immediately evident: one has to get up close and look carefully. Overall, if this presentation gives directions, I’d say that they might be phrased as “I give you this; come take a look.” Then, I hope, the poem does its work.
Did anything shift for you or come into new light as you began working on your visual response?
Artist Sandra Vega: With my cyanotype process, reusing imagery from past years and experiences allows the piece to take on whole new meaning, as was the case with this particular piece. I am able to put images together based on the emotional response I get/got like when I read this poem, for example.
What question would you like to ask your collaborator? (we will print your answers, too!)
Poet to Artist: Sandra, first of all, thank you. Second, how or when did you get involved with making cyanotypes? What are the challenges / rewards you find in that process–and in the resulting images? And how are such challenges compounded by working with words as their own visual image?
Artist Sandra Vega: I learned the cyanotype process in grad school from two of my very talented and beloved photographer friends. I had a sort of “facing my fears” moment, as I don’t consider myself a photographer by any means, but was able to express my art through a completely new medium and perspective. My biggest challenge was overcoming that caution I had when learning a new medium, but the biggest reward is always the way the beautiful blues translate your original photo or drawing.
Artist to Poet: What drives you and your connection to nature? How does it come into play with your poetry?
Poet Lex Runciman: When I was five or six, we moved to what was then a rural, unincorporated area outside of Portland, Oregon–a place with a rural woodland less than three blocks from the house. I wandered there, found trails there, watched birds there, ate wild berries there, and drank from a very small creek. I’d go there when it was snowing, and I’d find minimal shelter even in a driving rain. I knew which trees I could climb, and how far up I felt safe–or safe enough. When the maple seeds matured I’d gather handfuls just to watch them corkscrew down. It wasn’t all glorious: it was muddy, hilly, easy to take a fall in the winter and come home with stained elbows and knees. Briars could cut your forehead if you weren’t careful. One paper wasp nest hung large as a football. All this time, I was raised Catholic. By the time I was twelve, that woodland (maybe ten acres) was razed so a school could be built there; the rest of it was turned into a grassy park with a public swimming pool. This all came together early in high school when I read Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey,” though of course at the time it would have been completely uncool to tell anyone:
… Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear, – both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognise
In nature and the language of the sense
The anchor of my purest thoughts …
In 2025, I’m not so sure what “purest thoughts” might mean. And if it all seems more than a little bit overblown, I can attest that it was thrilling to a 14-year-old. Kathleen Jamie has said that we feel imperiled now, and I agree with her. Climate change yields a rollercoaster of emotions. But there are still times when that Wordsworthian joy seems possible and present and nourishing. As for “Tintern Abbey,” I love it yet.
When you consider the full folio of work from this issue (see the “related broadsides” links on the left), what questions, observations, or connections arise for you?
Poet Lex Runciman: As I read this group, it’s the images that fascinate me–that machete with its many possible uses, that “garden in my mouth,” that Sitka root. What all these poems do is remind me of how we exist inside nature’s framework–that we are at once able to imagine ourselves as separate from nature even as nature holds us, informs is, and is the air we breathe and the water we drink. Then there’s hair, which I now have little of. And the empty pastoral that’s not so empty. And, oh, teeth! Also, how non-representational art isn’t really nonrepresentational at all.
Describe your ideal “Vectorization”—where, in your wildest dreams, would you most like to see this broadside posted in the world?
Poet Lex Runciman: Blown up to 11 x 14 and posted in every library notice board in Oregon!
Artist Sandra Vega: Probably posted on a billboard or projected into the side of a building.
If this Broadsided collaboration were a type of weather, what would it be?
Poet Lex Runciman: Blue sky, of course.
Artist Sandra Vega: A dewy morning.
Do you have a favorite, generative prompt for artists or writers you’d like to share?
Poet Lex Runciman: This for writers: choose an object you have some history with and ask it questions. Relax your editor and let this take you wherever it goes.
Read any good books lately?
Poet Lex Runciman: Recently I’ve been reading the novels of Anne Michaels (most notably to me, The Winter Vault). Just finished CMarie Fuhrman’s Salmon Weather: Writing from the Land of No Return (highly recommended). Also Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead and Joe WIlkins’s The Entire Sky–both fine novels. And I revisit yearly Mary Oliver’s House of Light and Charles Wright’s China Trace.
Artist Sandra Vega: Small Gods by Terry Pratchett. I’m a big fan of sci-fi and otherworldness!
Seen any good art lately?
Poet Lex Runciman: The wall in front of my writing desk contains photos of Emily Dickinson, Virginia Woolf, Seamus Heaney, and Herman Melville. They glare at me. Also a winter 1860 photo of Anne Hathaway’s House, a copy of the life mask of John Keats, and a reproduction of an etching of Rembrandt looking at himself as he sits at a table, long sleeves, broad brim hat, flourishing moustache. He’s looking at a mirror and quite seriously trying to render what he looks like. Elsewhere in the house is a framed reproduction of Joan Eardley’s Catterline in Winter. My favorite Rothko also hangs in the house… the small reproduction a sad miniature of the original, but it prods the memory.
Artist Sandra Vega: The permanent collection at the Houston MFA is always great to go view for inspiration and motivation.
Anything else?
Poet Lex Runciman: This experience reminds me of the long-held truth that invention and imagination do not end with the writer–and therein lies the richness.