Nancy Spero, “All Writing is Pigshit,” Photo: courtesy of Sophie Kitching, www.sophiekitching.com
For the past two years I’ve been studying Antonin Artaud. I came to Artaud as a way to think more clearly about madness because I’m also writing poems about Pierre Rivière, a young man in the 1800s who killed his family and was or wasn’t crazy, depending on which medical expert/community member/version of Pierre you consult. Thinking about Rivière and madness took me to Artaud and nonsense—particularly the nonsense words in his translation of Lewis Carroll’s work and in some of his later poems. I have started publishing some of my thoughts about Artaud and his work at Jacket2 as a part of their Commentary series. You can read the first installment here. If there are folks out there who are thinking about Artaud, or have been influenced by Artaud, or who are thinking about the intersection between mental health and poetry, I’d love to hear from you.
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