“>>prompt>> list instructions> how to un>pave paradise>>”

Posted on March 4, 2026 • Words by S.D. Dillon • Art by Janice Redman

Note: This collaboration is part of our “Signs of Life: Artists and Writers Respond to AI” special folio (click to see them all!).  The original call for submissions is here. We asked four artists to provide images from their notebooks–that deeply human dream-draft-drift space.  We then provided four prompts.  This writer responded to prompt #1: “HOMOPUNKT (Homo = same/one; Punct = punctuation; K = Punk): Send us work using only one kind of punctuation, and use …

Tagged: Drawing, Ecopoetry

“Ghost Log”

Posted on April 3, 2025 • Words by Jennifer K. Sweeney • Art by Janice Redman

Collaborators’ Q&A: Artist Janice Redman: The sense of time passed/passing, a space revealed, sand slipping away. The grasping, the inability to hold on… it is all so ephemeral and mysterious. These qualities within the poem drew me to it in a visceral way. Poet Jennifer K. Sweeney: I was so interested to see how both holding/carrying and how negative space would be interpreted. The beautiful piece that Janice Redman made both answered that and surprised me at the same time. It gave me a different visual language for holding something that has no matter.

Janice Redman is a sculptor and mother who lives in Truro, Massachusetts.  Her work is in the permanent collections of The DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum.  Poet Jennifer K. Sweeney’s most recent poetry collections are Foxlogic, Fireweed and Dear Question: A Conversation, written collaboratively with L.I. Henley. The recipient of many honors, including the James Laughlin Award and a Pushcart Prize.

Tagged: Ecopoetry, Fiber Arts / Textile, Mourning, Sculpture

“The Mud Says to the Potter”

Posted on October 24, 2023 • Words by Rajiv Mohabir • Art by Janice Redman

Collaborators’ Q&A: Poet Rajiv Mohabir: This poem came about when I was thinking about what Rama, in the Kabir sense—not the conservative Hindutva iterations of Rama—meant for me as a queer poet, diasporic, and mixed-caste person. The idea of a static realization: either you realize the Divine or not, does not seem to fit with the fluidity of life systems. I wanted to point that out. Artist Janice Redman: I knew when I read this poem that I wouldn’t be making a new visual response; I knew something right existed in my studio already, but I didn’t know what. After weeks, reading the poem over and over, trying this or that, my responses started to feel like shedding a skin. I saw that I needed to strip my response down.

Janice Redman is a sculptor and mother who lives in Truro.  Born in England, she has been the recipient of many awards including the a Massachusetts Cultural Council award in sculpture and residencies at the Fine Arts Works Center in Provincetown, Yaddo, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas. Rajiv Mohabir is the author of three collections of poetry including Cutlish, which was longlisted for the 2021 PEN/Voelcker Prize and  a finalist for the National Book Critics Books Award. He also authored the memoir Antiman, which was a finalist for the 2021 PEN/America Open Book Award and 2021 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Memoir/Biography.

Tagged: Diaspora, LGBTIQ+ Writer, Philosophical Meditation, Religion / Spirituality, Sculpture

“Among Elders”

Posted on September 1, 2022 • Words by Cecelia Hagen • Art by Janice Redman

Collaborators’ Q&A

Poet Cecelia Hagen: I was surprised that the artist took an abstract approach to the poem, which has several visual elements–trees, a possible fox, or maybe robbers. But I can also see how the art illustrates the poem, the speaker’s sense of awkwardness, the unraveling self, the oafish loafishness of the rock/potato/bar of soap becoming unencumbered in spite of its immobility. Artist Janice Redman: When I read “Among Elders” the first time, I felt soaked in something I recognized, particularly as I got closer and closer to the last verse.  It’s the feeling I have when I walk to a pond in the woods and then into the water—leaving the car, leaving the phone, not knowing if I will be alone—and always the trepidation I feel as I enter and immerse into the unknown of the water.

Tagged: Angst, Animals, Black & White, Ecopoetry, Existential Crisis, Fear, Philosophical Meditation, Print / Monotype, Rural

“The Complicated Thing”

Posted on May 1, 2020 • Words by Brian Clifton • Art by Janice Redman

Collaborators’ Q&A: Poet Brian Clifton: We’re all a little complicated. Maybe remembering that whenever we try to help someone heal (physically or otherwise) is a good thing. Artist Janice Redman: I feel like so much of our emotional worlds exist under the surface. Sometimes close to the surface, sometimes deeper, entrenched, not sure if they will reach the light, not sure what shape or form they take, not knowing if they are safe to explore.

Poet Brian Clifton is the author of the chapbooks MOT and Agape (from Osmanthus Press). They have work in: Pleiades, Guernica, Beloit Poetry Journal, and other magazines. Artist Janice Redman is a sculptor and mother who lives in Truro. Her work is in the permanent collections of The DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum.

Tagged: Animals, Apocalypse, Black & White, Cities, Ekphrastic Poetry, Sculpture, Switcheroo

“Dark Matter”

Posted on July 1, 2018 • Words by Nancy Reddy • Art by Janice Redman

Collaborators’ Q&A: Artist Janice Redman: [This poem] just spoke so clearly to me. This is how it is to be a mother, to be a human being, to live this life in this body that feels like it is always just hanging on, being asked to do so much. Poet Nancy Reddy: Just a bit about the context of the poem: becoming a mother was (is!) really hard for me, and many of the poems I’ve written for the book I’m finishing now explore the darkness and difficulty of early motherhood – but in this poem I really wanted to capture some of the joy that’s also the experience of mothering (even with all the hair loss and cracked nipples and general insanity of small children).

Poet Nancy Reddy is the author of Double Jinx, a winner of the National Poetry Series, and the chapbook Acadiana. She teaches writing at Stockton University. Artist Janice Redman is a sculptor who lives on Cape Cod. Her work is in the permanent collections of the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum and the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum.

Tagged: Family, Food / Meals, Gratitude, Parenting / Parenthood, Sculpture, Solace

“The Silent One” / “Der Schweigsame”

Posted on November 1, 2016 • Words by Elisabeth Borchers & Caroline Wilcox Reul • Art by Janice Redman

Collaborators’ Q&A: Artist Janice Redman: When I read the poem, I really resonated with it, the feelings of failing being part of the process, of making and creating… struggling along in my studio, my mind telling me that I don’t know what I am doing but still having to trust the process of making just by showing up over and over again. Translator Caroline Wilcox Reul: I hadn’t envisioned how one would write silence but thought Janice captured it perfectly—the way the text was burned through, or perhaps the ink had dissolved itself and the paper that held it.

Artist Janice Redman is a sculptor who lives on Cape Cod. Her work is in the permanent collections of the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum and the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum. Translator Caroline Wilcox Reul has a MA in computational linguistics and German language and literature from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich.

Tagged: Black & White, Existential Crisis, Philosophical Meditation, Sculpture, Translation

“You Are Migrant”

Posted on November 17, 2015 • Words by Katherine Seluja • Art by Janice Redman

Collaborators’ Q&A: Artist Janice Redman: I love the weight of the figures, which are filled with sand, and the way they flop as they are stacked. To have them on top of a teacup, which for me is about comfort and ritual and intimacy—there’s something caring about it. There’s a sense of being in a state of sighing. Poet Katherine DiBella Seluja: First of all I love the medium… The anonymity, the gray, the lack of individuation or identity so fully represent the refugee experience and this is a significant aspect of the message I want to convey in my poem.

Artist Janice Redman, is a sculptor, beekeeper, and mother who lives on Cape Cod. Poet Katherine DiBella Seluja is a poet and a nurse.

Tagged: Broadsided Responds, Diaspora, Ekphrastic Poetry, Escape, Migration, Racial Identity, Sculpture, War

“To You and For You”

Posted on September 1, 2014 • Words by Willie Lin • Art by Janice Redman

Collaborators’ Q&A: Poet Willie Lin: I thought the bees/hives would probably appear. I think I’d also hoped that the atmosphere of the poem—its confusion, distraction, and illogic—would be evoked somehow. Artist Janice Redman: In my own personal work, I often wrap domestic objects. I muffle them. They lose their voice. I silence them. This silencing of domestic objects is about silencing childhood feelings… I think that’s what drew me to the poem.

Poet Willie Lin lives and works in Chicago. Artist Janice Redman is a sculptor whose work is in the permanent collections of the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum and the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum.

Tagged: Fear, Print / Monotype, Sexual Violence