“Sliding House/Meditation for After an Earthquake”
Collaborators’ Q&A: Poet Lisa Moore: My poem started from a couple of awkwardly-translated sentences on a news report. A woman whose husband had just been found in the rubble was asked for a reaction and I was struck by the difference between watching her speak (in Japanese) and the rather bloodless subtitles: “I am relieved to see him, of course. But there are so many others still missing.” Those words sounded so measured but the woman looked so distraught and desperate….not “relieved” at all. Those words and their inadequacy and what might be behind them rattled around in my brain for a few weeks and were called back to mind when I saw Ira Joel Haber’s piece “Sliding House.” Artist Ira Joel Haber: I did this drawing in a notebook when I was living in San Diego teaching Art at UCSD. I lived in a very small apartment which was on a high hill and had a patio overlooking the valley below. This drawing is of course about hanging, literally and figuratively. Some of my work, especially the work from 1969 to 1975 have a strong dose of catastrophe and destruction so this latest environmental disaster hit home.
Artist Ira Joel Haber was born and lives in Brooklyn, New York. Currently he teaches art at the United Federation of Teachers Retiree Program in Brooklyn. After working as an arts journalist, Writer Lisa L. Moore went into academia and since 1991 has been teaching English and Women’s and Gender Studies at The University of Texas at Austin.