Genre: Poetry

In a recent interview for the Paris Review’s Art of Poetry series by Chloe Garcia Roberts, the late Fanny Howe, who passed away on July 9, spoke of a revelatory experience writing “with the environment” at Annaghmakerrig, an artists’ retreat where she wrote her 1995 collection, O’Clock. “It was complete solitude, and an actual attempt to write, for the first time, with the environment,” says Howe. “Instead of sitting and looking out of the window, I just sank into the weather and the trees, dancing around in the environment of Ireland, which I know by its smell.” This week, find a spot outside as close to nature as possible, perhaps simply a location with trees, and try to sink into the landscape. Write a poem that captures the feelings of your surroundings, meditating on minute sensory details and the emotions that the environment evokes.

In a 4Columns review of After Words: Visual and Experimental Poetry in Little Magazines and Small Presses, 1960–2025 (Granary Books, 2025) edited by Steve Clay and M. C. Kinniburgh, a catalog for the exhibition of the same name at the Grolier Club in New York, Albert Mobilio lists a few of the unconventional poetry forms from the show: “A cardboard box stuffed with crumpled slips of paper; a book in which each line of text appears on its own sliver of a page; a series of poems printed on what look like business cards; knotted lengths of wool stenciled with verse.” This week think beyond words on a page and conceptualize a new poetry project that makes use of different pictorial and material elements. How might you split up words, lines, or stanzas on a variety of surfaces?