I’ve been thinking a lot about tangibility lately. Why is it important to touch objects?What does their tactility express? What does it mean that to holdТ something is know it in some inexplicably intimate way?

A project I’mТ interested in exploring in upcoming Pages visits is the idea of a poem object. I’d love to see how students respond not only to mixed media, but also to the concept of tactile poetry as we think about The Object Lesson.

I was inspired by PoèmТ Objet by surrealist artist Andre Breton. This mesmerizing collage incorporates wood, object and poetry in one piece. Translated, the inscription on the plaster egg reads “I see / I imagine.”

Photo: National Galleries

I don’tТ consider myself a visual artist in any capacityТ so this project stretched me. Yet,Т I was challenged by the notion of “seeing” or “imagining” thingsТ in a new way.

A bit of process:Т First I found lines in my poetry I wanted to represent tactilely. Using a vintage cook book, I shredded the pages and applied them to plastic eggs. I used these reinvented books (book-eggs?) as pagesТ€Т for my poetry.

It becameТ all about new ways of seeing and reimagining what I thought was even possible for my poems. But IТ found something about the practice of making things with myТ hands is jubilant, ripe, necessary. Through touch, I wasТ reminded what is to love, hold, cradle, caress, find, and know.

Let me know if you’d like me to try this out with students coming up!

–Joy Sullivan