Sarah Riggs and Cole Swensen

UDP authors Cole Swensen (Greensward, 2010) and Sarah Riggs (60 Textos, 2010) read from their new works of poetry at Bridge Street Books in Washington, DC.
This event is free and open to the public.

Sarah Riggs is a poet, translator, and visual artist. She is the author of Waterwork (Chax Press, 2007) and Chain of Miniscule Decisions in the Form of a Feeling (Reality Street Editions, 2007). A companion volume to Riggs’s books 28 Telegrams, 43 Post-Its and 38 Instant Messages, 60 Textos continues the poet’s investigation into the ways affect and technology co-exist. “Texto” is French for “text message,” and these stark, uncanny, often funny poems fleetingly and memorably transform the cell-phone screen into a book.

Cole Swensen is the author of twelve volumes of poetry, most recently Ours (University of California Press, 2008) and The Glass Age (Alice James Books, 2007). She is also a translator of contemporary French poetry, prose, and art criticism. She was the writer-in-residence at Yale’s Beinecke Library in 2007-2008, where the project Greensward was conceived and written.

Greensward looks at the interaction between animals, humans, and gardens. The short sections of poetry and prose, sometimes plainspoken, sometimes poised precariously on the line between sense and non-sense, are dovetailed into engravings of 18th century gardens by the artist John Roque. Graphic artist Shari DeGraw and poet Cole Swensen collaborated on excerpting elements from the garden maps and playing with scale and patterning to create a conversation between the visual and verbal elements.