“Small Town Desire”
Collaborators’ Q&A
What inspired you to bring your work to Broadsided?
Poet Kirby Wright: I was influenced by the Submission Guidelines asking for poetry that was evoctive and riveting. I’ve always been fascinated by midnight and the secret world of empty trains and residents of small town America. What are people feeling when the hoopla of parties and family gatherings ends and they are left alone with hidden emotions? My “Small Town Desire” reminds me of a song by Cole Porter my mother crooned, “In The Still Of The Night.”
What drew you to create a visual response to this poem, in particular?
Artist Kara Page: I moved to a small town in Iowa when I was a kid, and that experience shaped me in lasting ways. Many people around me were ready to leave or frustrated with small-town life and its constant rumor mill. I had just moved away from my family and didn’t know anyone, but I found real, true-blue friendships there. I don’t live there anymore, but that town still holds a special place in my heart, which is why the “Small Town Desire” immediately resonated with me.
How did this poem come to be?
Poet Kirby Wright: Kara hits the mood of the piece with the young woman at the center contemplating her value and emotions in both a dark and light universe. There’s a haunting quality to the piece, one which captures the essence of my verse and makes the writing more powerful.
How did this image come to be?
Artist Kara Page: This image came out of a floating collage assignment I was working on with my students during a conversation about revision and what happens when a teacher asks for more work, but you feel like your piece is finished. I returned to an older collage, and after reading the poem, I felt the woman’s face in it perfectly aligned with the poem’s tone. I began reworking the piece, carving into the figure and layering paint that spills out onto butcher paper. The result became a somewhat visceral image, reflecting what I see as the duality of small towns—cozy and familiar on the surface, but also capable of isolation, rumor, and quiet forms of exclusion.
What question would you like to ask your collaborator? (we will print your answers, too!)
Poet to Artist: It appears you may have been taken by those silent, reflective hours in the early morning hours when you can almost hear your heartbeat and the distant sounds of trains and passing cars. True?
Artist Kara Page:What an interesting question! While I can’t say I’ve experienced that, this piece gave me thoughtful moments of reflection as I revised it.
Artist to Poet: What small town sparked this poem?
Poet Kirby Wright: Answer to come.
Did anything shift for you or come into new light as you began working on your visual response?
Artist Kara Page: Yes—I’ve actually continued revising it, though I still wouldn’t call it “done.” Since first returning to the piece, I’ve learned more about digital painting, and I think I will push the work further in that direction if I keep developing it. In that sense, my relationship to the image has shifted from something finished and revisited to something still in process.
Have you ever written work that has been inspired by visual art?
Poet Kirby Wright: I wrote the flash piece “At The National Gallery” of Ireland in response to Richard Moynan’s Military Manouevres. A steeple rises at the end of the pitted dirt street in Dublin. On the far right, the leader of a peasant boy army wears a helmet adorned with a horse-hair plume. The boys seek to emulate the red-coated soldiers of the Royal Irish Dragoon Guards.
When you consider the full folio of work from this issue, what questions, observations, or connections arise for you?
Artist Kara Page: I find myself thinking about how artists navigate between personal narrative and broader interpretation. There’s a clear connection between lived experience and visual expression, and it makes me wonder how meaning shifts depending on medium, style, or context. I’m also curious about how process and revision shape what we ultimately understand as “finished” work.
Describe your dream “Vectorization”—where, in your wildest dreams, would you most like to see this broadside posted in the world?
Poet Kirby Wright: It belongs to Small Town America.
Artist Kara Page: In my ideal “Vectorization,” I’d love to see this broadside posted in a random thrift store out West. I know people who enjoy going thrifting and exploring unexpected places, and it would be exciting to imagine them stumbling across it there—finding something from my world in their own.
If this Broadsided collaboration were a type of weather, what would it be?
Poet Kirby Wright: The dark quiet of the early morning hours, perhaps with it sprinkling outside.
Artist Kara Page: A funnel cloud that hasn’t touched down yet—
Do you have a favorite, generative prompt for artists or writers you’d like to share?
Poet Kirby Wright: Write about what stuns you, something so profound there’s no going back.
Artist Kara Page: A brain dump—write everything you can for a full page without stopping. Don’t edit, don’t revise, don’t judge. Just keep moving until the page is full.
Read any good books lately?
Poet Kirby Wright: Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson and Main Street by Sinclair Lewis.
Artist Kara Page: Madness: A Bipolar Life by Marya Hornbacher.
Seen any good art lately?
Poet Kirby Wright: I’m fascinated by the work of Banksy. I accidentally posed between two of his pieces on a back alley wall in Cork, Ireland. I included the photo in my chapbook The Dublin Bus to Cork.
Artist Kara Page: Every day—my students’ artwork inspires me in quiet and surprising ways. I see it often, but it’s theirs to share.
Anything else
Poet Kirby Wright: Write not because you have to but because you’re compelled to do so.
Artist Kara Page: “Read, read, read. Read everything-trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it’s good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out of the window.” ― William Faulkner