Quotes of the Week
and celebrating Judith: Women Making Visual Poetry
Image description: Cover of Judith: Women Making Visual Poetry, A 21st century anthology edited by Amanda Earl with a collage of the visual poetry that appears in the book.
I celebrate this the third anniversary of Judith: Women Making Visual Poetry published by Timglaset Editions in 2021 with this quote about Mirella Bentivoglio’s wonderful work curating women artists from Pages: Bentivoglio, Selected Works.
"Between 1971 and 1981 alone, Bentivoglio curated fourteen different installations that spanned four countries and three continents. Thanks in large part to her efforts as a curator, a sizeable number of women began to be taken seriously within the Italian art world and continue to enjoy international recognition."
We can resist. We don’t need to pit ourselves against each other. We can seek deeper conversation, instead. We can think. We can act. We can eschew the shackles of xenophobia and hate. We can look to the bees, pollinating the next season, working together to create sweetness.
We can claim our own collective power.
We can each take one action—large or small—and grow a little braver for each other and ourselves. We can imagine pathways toward joy, pleasure, and liberation.
In this way, we shall build a more just world.
To say ‘I wonder’ is to say ‘I question; I ask.’ The mind seeks. Sometimes it finds answers, sometimes it does not. We need wonder in order to keep moving and growing—to stay alive in the world. It gives us meaning and, in fact, makes us human.
Beginnings are apt to be shadowy.
Rachel Carson, The Sea Around Us
"Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Every day, I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts."
Søren Kierkegaard
“A poet’s work is to name the unnamable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep.”
Salman Rushdie
Stubborness is a good, all-purpose skill.
finally, a salute to women-run press, Gap Riot Press: “Gap Riot Press is anarchist at its heart and communal by nature. Gap Riot Press manifests from the dire need for new voices not only in what we read and hear, but in the very production and publication of poetic texts. Gap Riot Press introduces a new invasive species of poetics and production that is radical, intersectional, and speaks contrasting volumes. Gap Riot Press began and continues in conversation.” Their new season of radical titles will soon be available.
If you like what I do and want to support my efforts to find joy in difficult times, to amplify and lift up voices that are systematically excluded from canons, to engage in the conversation of literature and art, to write so that kindred misfits do not feel alone, please get a paid or free subscription or buy me a coffee.
May your week ahead be full of calm, safety, joy, love and whimsy.
Happy third anniversary. I still remember receiving my copy of Judith in the mail, and how wondrous it felt.
We need wonder in order to keep moving and growing—to stay alive in the world. It gives us meaning and, in fact, makes us human.
I agree and thank you for sharing.