Event Type
Since its English publication, Danish experimentalist Inger Christensen’s alphabet (trans. Susanna Nied) has been a touchstone for environmentally minded poets in the U.S. A book of intersecting forms, alphabet is an abecedarian poetry series that uses the Fibonacci sequence—one of the so-called languages of nature—to determine line count from section to section, which lends itself to a spiralling and expansive poetics. The intersection of linguistic and mathematical sense-making systems emphasizes the book’s questions about the limits of sense as Christensen engages the senselessness of the atrocities of war and planetary destruction and makes a lyric plea for the existence and continuance of human and non-human lifeforms. The four poets on this panel build on Christensen’s work and engagement with ecological and sociopolitical concerns. Poets Carolyn Hembree, Kristi Maxwell, Sarah Rose Nordgren, and Kathy Wu will discuss their engagement with Christensen’s poetry and poethics then read some of their corresponding poems.