Through poetry, Living Methods writers created “porous” maps of the Kinney Center as a physical and textual site: not just a place-to-write, but a place formed and reformed by writing. Each writer documented their ongoing relationship with a location of their choosing on the Center’s grounds, a place they felt drawn to investigate through poetry.
Alexei Gusev
Statement
These works are inspired by my found space out in the field of the Kinney Center in North Amherst. From the library itself you can see rolling hills in the distance past this wide open field of yellow and green grass. My impulse was to run out into the field and assimilate. I imagined a perfect viewpoint where the distant infinite would fill me with hope and fury. When I did run out into the field and found a comfortable spot to sit, I realized that when firmly settled, actually I could only really see what was directly in front of me. These works come from this agreement: my impulse to think (and feel) to something greater than myself and greater than my surroundings coupled with my reality - sat surrounded by the tall grass.
I was inspired by a collection of Ovid’s works that is kept in the center that had notations printed on the corners to instruct the binding. These notations were printed to aid in the construction of the book itself and so subliminally inform the reader’s digest as well. I was similarly inspired by Tongo Eisen-Martin’s form in the collection Heaven Is All Goodbyes. The layout of the work itself translates into texture and breath and I wanted that feeling to translate in my own work. Conversation and direction. I want my writing to be present at hand. I was also inspired by Bernadette Mayer’s sonnets and was interested in writing a sonnet of my own. In conversation with traditional convention but firmly present.