“When Called Out”
Collaborators’ Q&A
What inspired you to bring your work to Broadsided?
Poet Maya Janson: Appreciation for Broadsided’s inspired approached in fostering a conversation between poetry and visual art.
What drew you to create a visual response to this poem, in particular?
Artist Amy Meissner: This piece felt specific to one person’s experience, yet managed to maintain a universal narrative, reaching as far back to Eve and that deep disappointment. It reminded me of this textile work I created in 2016 called Fatigue Threshold. In materials study, “fatigue” refers to a component’s failure after repeated and excessive loads—the crumpled beam, the snapped lever, the bowed wall. This piece explores the landscape of women’s work through the use of abandoned cloth, the female form and traditional handwork, portraying the moment before collapse. The burdens are emotional, physical, sexual, literal. I saw this same sensibility in Maya’s writing.
How did this poem come to be?
Poet Maya Janson: I spend a lot of time walking near a large river near my home in Western Massachusetts. I also spend time at the end of Cape Cod, staring at the water, thinking about whales. It’s possible that the poem was in response to a writing prompt offered by one of the writing groups I attend, but I don’t remember a specific prompt. The word leviathan may have been part of the prompt.
How did this image come to be?
Artist Amy Meissner: I received a scrap of doily from another artist in 2015 with the story of a woman, Amelia, who made the original commissioned tablecloth while incarcerated for killing her abusive husband. I made this piece, specific to her story and my question of what event would have finally crossed the fatigue threshold for this woman. The vaginal openings are repeated a dozen times within the stars of an old quilt, with the words “MAKE THE BED AND MAKE THE BED AND MAKE THE BED…” repeated nine times in appliquéd vintage pink wool around the border. I’m very proud that the piece is in the permanent collection at the Anchorage Museum, because craft-based work is often dismissed as irrelevant in the world of capital A Art.
What did you think an artist would pick up on from your poem? Does the artist’s response make you see the poem differently?
Poet Maya Janson: I might have expected the art to include the color blue. That said, I’m surprised by and love the colors and pattern the artist chose! And, that compelling slot in the middle/heart of the piece is so perfectly labial, which mirrors the female voice and sentiment of the poem. The artist’s response feels grounded in both the domestic—a square of quilted fabric—and visionary—a third eye peering, unblinking, from the center. My eye keeps getting pulled into that center, curious to see what exists on the inside, beyond the opening. Is that the bark of a tree? Or is it flesh? What a pleasure to see Amy Meissner’s fabulous response.
Did anything shift for you or come into new light as you began working on your visual response?
Artist Amy Meissner: Since this is a pre-existing piece, it reinforced the universality of personal narrative and emotional truth of both visual and literary art.
What question would you like to ask your collaborator? (we will print your answers, too!)
Poet to Artist: What moved you to work with the color yellow? What inspired you to fashion a quilt square? And, that all-important center of your piece—I’d love to hear how that came to be.
Artist Amy Meissner: This piece was made from a quilt someone gave me around 2015-2016, so the yellow came to me rather than my seeking it out. The quilt wasn’t particularly well put together, nor was there evidence that it was loved, but it was used hard. Around this same time, I learned the story of Amelia, a woman incarcerated in the Detroit House of Corrections for killing her abusive husband likely around the same time the quilt was made. While there was no connection between the object and the story other than in my mind, to me, the quilt was the embodiment of this woman. I amplified the original yellow of the quilt by layering chartreuse silk organza over the top, and this, mixed with the various pinks I used throughout created a wall work that vibrated with intensity. Like a person in a constant state of hyper vigilance. The image that accompanies your writing in this broadisde is one square from the larger work. About that “all-important center,” my work always explores the work of women: literal, physical, emotional. This piece is called Fatigue Threshold, which is an industrial term that describes the point at which materials and structures fail from repeated loads and stress. I made this piece because I wondered about Amelia’s fatigue threshold within her own body’s structure and the final load that pushed her to murder her husband. I question my own fatigue threshold—if it exists, if I’ve pushed past it, if I’ve reached it, if I ever will— and what the aftermath would look like.
Artist to Poet: Maya, did this work emerge from a point of your own fatigue threshold?
Poet Maya Janson: I think the genesis of this poem had more to do with playful exertion than fatigue of any kind. In thinking of being “called out” for some perceived wrong, my mind went to the issue of response. How to respond? How to expand the self, truly listen and make room for another’s perspective? As is often the case, the poem had its own ideas regarding how to proceed. Rhythm and repetition became an important vehicle. So did tone, the voice of the poem moving from a place of less certainty to more and arriving, by poem’s end, with Eve and Apple. Though there’s negation involved, the final stance is one of defiant push-back.
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 Maya Janson: The complexity of human experience and the poignancy of expression.
Artist Amy Meissner: To me, themes from these images seem to reflect nature and the body. Even the photograph of two pieces of flatware (spoons? forks? knives?) feels figurative and relational, especially when paired with the writing. I wonder if this is where we are in this time, reaching, fumbling for ourselves within a social and political environment that feels cold and dismissive. Of course we would turn to the natural world, and to the body, for solace.
Describe your ideal “Vectorization”—where, in your wildest dreams, would you most like to see this broadside posted in the world?
Poet Maya Janson: There’s a very old hillside temple in Kyoto where I used to wander and sit. Huge, hewn beams, a stone path through trees. I’d love to place the broadside on those broad stones and let it be washed away in the rain.
Artist Amy Meissner: MOMA in New York.
If this Broadsided collaboration were a type of weather, what would it be?
Poet Maya Janson: Partly sunny with a fleet of cumulonimbus clouds.
Artist Amy Meissner: Clear blue sky morning, frost on the ground (or maybe that’s just what’s happening today in Alaska).
Do you have a favorite, generative prompt for artists or writers you’d like to share?
Poet Maya Janson: Turn to the person sitting to your left and ask them for a noun, verb, adjective.
Artist Amy Meissner: I recently listened to an interview with Brian Eno, during which he emphasized the importance of “knowing what you like” during a time when we’re constantly being told what we should like by capitalism, corporations, influencers. So, an ongoing question I have for myself is, “No, really, what do I like?”
Read any good books lately?
Poet Maya Janson: So many good books! For poetry I’ve been rereading Kathleen Graber. For some big picture perspective Living in the Light of Death and The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying.
Artist Amy Meissner: Currently reading Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things, by Randy O. Frost and Gail Steketee; Alterations, by Cori Winrock; and slowly making my way through 884 pages of Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House, by Cheryl Mendelson.
Seen any good art lately?
Poet Maya Janson: Public art in Providence, Rhode Island.
Artist Amy Meissner: I was recently in San Francisco, and while my husband consulted with a tattoo artist in Chinatown, I sat in the spotless, well-appointed waiting area flipping through a coffee table book featuring vintage maritime tattoo designs. I admit I had a brief moment of, “What if I…?” because I liked it, all of it.