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Contributions by Meghan Keane:

“Superfund Site, Butte, Montana”

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Collaborators’ Q&A:  Artist Meghan Keane:  Corrosive chemicals are not only at play in the making of the print but are quite visible in the image that’s created, underscoring the meaning of the poem on a few levels. Poet Amy A. Whitcomb: Meghan’s art makes the poem strange to me again. It reintroduces a layer of ambiguity that I thought the speaker had wiped out. But now the speaker doesn’t get the last say, nor does the subject, the poet, or the artist. The whole, the collaboration, has its own agenda.

Poet Amy A. Whitcomb is an artist, editor, and educator based in California and Idaho. She is a recipient of artist residencies at Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Jentel Foundation, and PLAYA. Artist Meghan Keane is a painter and printmaker. She is the founding director of meghan.keane.studio and a visiting alumni artist at the Brooklyn College art department printshop.

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“Ditibaabide / The Rolling”

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Collaborators’ Q&A: Poet Margaret Noodin: The image of the rollers fascinated me because they are so thin and consist mostly of a round skeleton used to put air and motion into hair.  Artist Meghan Keane: As a solo portrait that I had always viewed as playful yet having fairly massive and megalithic properties (like Carnac on someone’s head, a curler topography of sorts), I am fascinated that while each vision is so evidently distinct, they both hold something in common that I myself didn’t see.

Artist Meghan Keane is a painter and printmaker. She is the founding director of meghan.keane.studio. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.  Poet Margaret Noodin is the author of Weweni and What the Chickadee Knows: Poems in Anishinaabemowin and English, and is co-creator of www.ojibwe.net.

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“Como Una Vela”

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Collaborators Q&A: Artist Meghan Keane: this colorful piece isn’t just a compelling abstract composition of shapes and colors, but has the capacity to function as a portal to communal memory and ties between humans, is an element of the work I now see, thanks to this “Como Una Vela.” Poet Michelle Moncayo: “Rollers” was striking in that it instantly took me through a tour of several very specific, very vivid places in my life–-from the island of Dominican Republic, to Brooklyn, to Newark. The bold purples, pinks, and blues of the hair rollers combined with the curving movement of the shapes created a powerful, layered narrative.

Poet Michelle Moncayo is a Dominican/Ecuadorian poet. She received a 2020 Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, SPACE at Ryder Farm, and Vermont Studio Center. Artist Meghan Keane is a painter and printmaker. She is a visiting alumni artist at Brooklyn College art department printshop.

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“Mother’s Silver Teapot”

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Collaborators’ Q&A: Artist Meghan Keane: I see my friends in this poem; war and forced displacement are their reality and returning home might not be safe in their lifetimes (may that not be the case; and, it is currently uncertain). This poem’s description of a truth that millions of people continue to endure resonated as urgently important. Poet Matthew Thorburn: Meghan’s refraction helps me to see the mother—a character who’s at the center of the book-length sequence that includes this poem, but whom I had never really been able to picture before.

Poet Matthew Thorburn’s latest book is The Grace of Distance (LSU Press, 2019), and he’s the author of six previous collections of poems. He lives with his wife and son in New Jersey. Artist Meghan Keane is a painter and printmaker. She is the founding director of meghan.keane.studio. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

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“Mothers”

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Collaborators’ Q&A:  Poet Nicelle Davis: Broadsided is simply beautiful—it represents all the things I consider to be “good” and “true.” Broadsided is driven by a sense of restorative justice—it gives art back. Artist Meghan Keane: I was moved and inspired by the direct and veiled content of LGBT+ sexual experiences. A line that hasn’t left me: “When she said she knew, I understood tamales.”

Nicelle Davis is a California poet, collaborator, and performance artist. She is the creator of The Poetry Circus and collaborator on the Nevermore Poetry Festival. Artist Meghan Keane is a painter and printmaker. She is the founding director of meghan.keane.studio.

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“Niizhosagoons gemaa Nisosagoons Daso-biboonagad” / “Two or Three Thousand Years”

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Collaborators’ Q&A: Do you see an overlap between the act of translation and the act of responding visually to a piece of literature? Poet Margaret Noodin: …The idea moves as words from one language to another and then as color into a pattern. Both respond to the reality of a river and what water and its circulation means to the earth. Artist Meghan Keane: …Responding visually is always a question of legibility to me, how will my drawing be read, what are the multiple readings of it that coexist together? How can I translate the poem into a non-verbal experience yet maintain the poetic integrity and not veer into illustration? 

Poet Margaret Noodin is author of Bawaajimo: A Dialect of Dreams in Anishinaabe Language and Literature and Weweni, a collection of bilingual poems in Ojibwe and English. To see and hear current projects visit www.ojibwe.net Artist Meghan Keane is a painter and printmaker. She is the founding director of meghan.keane.studio and a visiting alumni artist at the Brooklyn College art department printshop.

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“ts’ǫǫsí” / “mouse”

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Collaborators’ Q&A: If this broadside were a piece of music, what would it be? Poet Rex Lee Jim: A protection song to be sung in a sweat lodge ceremony. Artist Meghan Keane: To be completely honest, this is the first broadside I have done where I have no idea. The musicality of the poem is the music it is meant to be, I find. To add anything else would feel non-essential on my part.

Poet Rex Lee Jim is a Navajo medicine man, poet, playwright, essayist, and scholar. Artist Meghan Keane is a painter and printmaker. She is the founding director of meghan.keane.studio

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“187” & “84”

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Collaborators’ Q&A: Why this poem/these poems? Artist Meghan Keane: I visited Greece for the first time last summer and the experience has yet to leave me. How does translation fit into your creative life? Translator Paul Merchant: … [it] is a powerful message about valuing the outsider: an important project in these more insular times.

Poet Yannis Ritsos (1909 – 1990) was Greece’s best loved poet. Translator Paul Merchant, a native of Wales, has had poetry and translations widely published. Artist Meghan Keane is a painter and printmaker. She is the founding director of meghan.keane.studio

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“Almost Spring”

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Collaborators’ Q&A: Poet John A. Nieves: Meghan’s remarkable piece gave a new and powerful sense of texture the emotional complexity of the poem, the gesture toward soot/pitch/the darkness in an ultrasound moved me toward that dense blackness in a visceral way. Artist Meghan Keane: …art is about the leap beyond the illustrative to the visually poetic (how real art work manages to transcend itself and become the first time you’re experiencing that expression)…

Poet John A. Nieves‘s first book, Curio, was published in 2014 by Elixir Press. Artist Meghan Keane is a painter and printmaker. She is a visiting alumni artist at the Brooklyn College art department printshop.

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“The Glass Images”

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Collaborators’ Q&A: Poet Ladan Osman: I hoped for something that was as messy and achy as I felt when arranging these odd news bits and memories. Artist Meghan Keane: This piece began with the color: I knew I wanted it to be black and white. Secondarily, I was thinking about the title and the idea of the TV: these musings informed the shape of the print and also the ghostly, ethereal quality.

Poet Ladan Osman has received fellowships from the Union League Civic & Arts Foundation, Fine Arts Work Center, Cave Canem Foundation, and the Michener Center for Writers. Artist Meghan Keane is a painter, printmaker, and the founding director of meghan.keane.studio.

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“Lexiconography 1 / Aabjito’ikidowinan 1 / Used Words 1”

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Collaborators’ Q&A: Artist Meghan Keane: My work often deals with layers, movement and gesture. It was very organic for this visual response to loop, drape, and flow in ways similar to the unfolding and self-translating quality of the poem. Translator Margaret Noori: It was very much like swimming through wind instead of water with the same body you have always used, but surrounded by something new. Poet Heid Erdrich: There’s movement, too, in the image, which I really appreciated since Ojibwe is a verb-based language.

Poet Heid E. Erdrich has authored four books of poetry. Artist Meghan Keane exhibits nationally and internationally. Translator Margaret Noori directs the Comprehensive Studies Program and teaches the Anishinaabe Language and American Indian Literature at the University of Michigan.

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“Matches”

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Collaborators’ Q&A: Artist Meghan Keane: I am inspired by the tremendous variety of match-related imagery and what I, no literary critic but fan, consider great ingenuity with respect to the word choices creating these images.  Poet George David Clark: I think the thing that surprised me most is just how successful the image is in its manipulation of those contrasts: color, shape, texture.

Poet George David Clark’s honors include the Henry Hoyns Fellowship from the University of Virginia and the Provost’s Doctoral Fellowship from Texas Tech University. Artist Meghan Keane is currently a teaching artist at Kentler International Drawing Space and a visiting alumni artist at the Brooklyn College art department printshop.

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“The Ringmaster Answers the Phone”

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Collaborators’ Q&A: Artist Meghan Keane: I was, and continue to be, inspired by how complicated the imagery was to consider in visual form. It was a bit dark, enigmatic, frenetic yet motionless (“unable to be still” yet “drowning”)…  Poet Amorak Huey: I was struck immediately by the tension—frustration? anger, maybe even?—on the right side of the page. I love the messiness of it, the scribbling-out of it,—and I also love the brightness of the red.

Poet Amorak Huey teaches creative and professional writing at Grand Valley State University in Michigan. Artist Meghan Keane is currently a teaching artist at Kentler International Drawing Space and a visiting alumni artist at the Brooklyn College art department printshop.

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“Dear Johnny”

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Collaborators’ Q&A: Poet Angela Veronica Wong: I think that the artistic response showed me how much of the poem has imagery of parting, of coming together, of lifelines and the uncertainty of reaching out. Artist Meghan Keane: I liked the blood image and the map image. That never changed. I like the idea of a map-like painting that created its paths through the “spaces.”

Poet Angela Veronica Wong‘s Dear Johnny, In Your Last Letter was selected by Bob Hicok as a winner of the 2011 Poetry Society of America New York Chapbook Fellowship. Artist Meghan Keane is a teaching artist at Kentler International Drawing Space and a visiting alumni artist at the Brooklyn College art department printshop.

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“Wild nights”

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Collaborators’ Q&A: Artist Meghan Keane: For me, art is making something transform from what is expected to what is unexpected and complex and beautiful (even if it’s dark and haunting); that process is tactile, using the body as a tool for manipulating materials.

Artist Meghan Keane is a teaching artist at Kentler International Drawing Space and a visiting alumni artist at the Brooklyn College art department printshop.

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“As Any Approaching Might Smile and Stop” (Savich & Keane)

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Collaborators’ Q&A: Writer Zach Savich: Meghan Keane animated the sentences—rippling. I like the thing being born in the middle, already tethered. Artist Meghan Keane: I was inspired by the imagery: the sound of the press; the simple blackness; the yellow line; the repetition, numerical or not.

Writer Zach Savich is the author of three full-length collections of poetry—Full Catastrophe Living, Annulments, and The Firestorm. Artist Meghan Keane is the founding director of meghan.keane.studio.

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