Artist Statement:
I've long been interested in doing hermit-crab work: "[x] as container"—roundabout, rhizome, apartment floor plan. The language of poetry is fluid; and the writing process is so much inflected by what state I'm pouring from and whether where I'm pouring can support the material, whether that container can hold it. So much poetry in this realm borders on the conceptual, sculptural: sometimes, a container is like mesh. Another time, it sloshes around like in a long, wide pan. And is the language like water, or is it concrete?
On this placemat, I thought about the spirit of how I would want to introduce my community to poetry, to my work: as a site of play, as an experiment. As a literal invitation to connect the dots, to find language, to illustrate an image with one's own imagination, to work make visible oneself what language can only describe. If you'd like me to mail you a physical copy of the placemat, please reach out via Instagram @pdedgar30 and I'll mail one to you!
P.D. Edgar (MFA, MA) is a Ph.D. candidate in Texts & Technology at the University of Central Florida, where he studies 20th/21st Century mediations of poetry from modernist periodicals to Instapoetry. PD grew up between Managua, Nicaragua, and Central Florida. As an experiment and extension of his research, he started re•mediate, a literary mag for computer-assisted creative writing, in 2024. Some of his previous work is available at Ghost Proposal, Michigan Quarterly Review, and Burning House Press.
