Performance Poetry - Where it Starts

Ouka Leele, one of the photographers in a show called Women & Women 

In March, words will blow around me like a storm. 

Slowly, over the next weeks, I plan to tell you a bit about three performances I have scheduled – all are poetry-based, but each one unique.

One of the events is a collaborative word-response to an exhibit at the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque. The exhibit showcases enormous photographs by five female artists. I am working with three women poets to create a group response. 

The first step was personal. A few weeks ago, I stood in front of each photograph and looked at it. I looked into the room of each photograph. When words came to me, I wrote them down. I wrote sloppy descriptions, and I wrote about how each photograph made me feel. I wrote words like “polywog clouds” because that’s what I saw.