Visual artists! To you this does concern!
How are you all? Where do I begin? You’ll have to apologize for the brashness and strange inconsistencies of this letter, as I just had 4 teeth torn out of my skull, and I’m still feeling the effects of the exciting ménage of chemicals that were pumped into me.
I guess the best place to start would be at the beginning, where it seems most things start. I have recently finished collection 110 poems that I have wrote over the past year and have compiled and shipped them off to be edited by the one and only Neal Lyons. Neal is a likeminded thinker and I trust him with it all. There are a few appealing aspects to this collection which I believe haven’t been done/documented/thought of before. Maybe I’m being overzealous and pompous, but allow me to explain.
The collection began on a whim. I have a college degree in journalism and have been writing lyrics for the past 5 years, but that has been the extent of my writing. To be a poet, one must READ poetry, and when I began the book a year or so ago, I read and adored Gord Downie’s, Coke Machine Glow. To skeptics and literary blowhards, this is far less training and experience then someone looking to be a published poet should have. But with my ambition being as it is I decided to try and capture a moment in the life of a young artist very rarely documented, let alone first hand through the fine tuning of the craft and with visual aids (Where you come in) This moment will be shown to the reader/observer as a fly on the wall, carefully watching me stumble over mistakes, juvenile angst and idealism as I completely immersed myself in poetry and read books upon books and studied and took pointers and criticism from the very best experienced and up and coming poets. Many of the pieces that were not strong have been left in the collection to show the chronological progression of the work. I want the book to thrive on its mistakes, show the payoff of a good piece, and the misery and un-fulfillment of a bad one. With bad/sloppy work, there is only the potential for realizing it and capitalizing on the lessons you’ve learned, and even still, I have a world of lessons to learn.
So although the book is being edited as we speak, I have decided to send out the poems as they were written in chronological order. Which is of course the essence of the whole thing, being able to see the progression, and this is where the visual artists come in and add another layer to the pie.
When you read the collection and hopefully start to get ideas, we need to keep in mind that the stuff at the start should be more minimalist and simplistic, maybe be a bit cocky even, a little brash. And as your create visuals for pieces further and further on in the book, try and increase the technical and aesthetic qualities of the pieces. Some ideas are going from no colors to vibrancy. Maybe earlier pieces could be observed for 30 seconds, where later pieces are at the point where they need to be absorbed for 5/10 minutes. The jist is that I want the visuals to be able to flow and accentuate the rate of progression and fine tuning as it is happening in the poetry.
(As a sidenote, the mediums of art that I’m looking at collecting are extremely loose. Photographs ((Digital, polaroids, 35mm, slides)) Mosaics, collages, mixed media, oils, acrylics, ink to paper, crayons, photoshop art, sculpture ((soap stone, sand stone, wood carvings, wood burnings, Innukshuks)) spray paint, graffiti, ANYTHING is acceptable, as long as it is honest and comes from the heart then it will be considered)
All the pieces should be either photographed when they are ready to be submitted and put in high resolution on a CD and mailed to myself, or if they are photos themselves just scan them into the computer and send them away!!
The book will (upon completion) will be sent to numerous small and large publishers and in the worst case scenario it doesn’t get picked up, I will self publish it and all contributing artists will receive a copy!
So if you want on board and if you have any questions or comments, kudos or criticisms please email me at bentfilms2g@hotmail.com to confirm your involvement along with the type(‘s) of visuals you will be submitting! And from there, you will receive a word document of the collection, titled “A Conquest of Some Relevance�
I’m extremely excited to see what comes of all this,
Thanks, best regards, good luck and have fun!!!
Ben Wannamaker
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Jah burn dah roots/and love dah youths
