To Feel the Earth As One's Skin

an anthology of Indigenous Visual Poetry published by UK's Poem Atlas

Image description: a white book upright on a grey background with a shadow. TEXT: An Anthology of Indigenous Visual Poetry; TO FEEL THE EARTH AS ONE’S SKIN and then repeated backwards. Edited by Lara Felsing, Marama Salsano and Astra Papachristodoulou.

In my introduction to Judith: Women Making Visual Poetry, I expressed a hope for the publication of subsequent visual poetry anthologies that continue to feature those who have been erased from literary and arts canons. It is satisfying to see this happening with the publication of “To Feel The Earth As One’s Skin.”

I must begin with praise for Astra Papachristodoulou, a visual poet and artist based in London, UK. I believe I first encountered Astra’s work when I began the process of researching for the anthology with Timglaset Editions. I may have known of her before that, but once the anthology work began, I was in awe of her work in sculptural poetics, and I would even say that her visual poetry and curation have expanded my idea of what visual poetry is and could be, and contributed to my vision for Judith: Women Making Visual Poetry.

To Feel the Earth as One’s Skin recently published by Astra’s press, Poem Atlas, is the only Indigenous visual poetry anthology I have ever seen, and I am so glad it now exists. In the foreword, the editors acknowledge the long history of Indigenous visual poetry. In white canons, this work has been ignored to the point where I knew of very few Indigenous people making visual poetry before this anthology.

The title of the anthology, comes from a work by Cecilia Vicuña, who is one of the contributors to the book. She wrote in her 1983 publication, Precario/Precarious (Tanam Press, 1983) and featured in this exhibition: Lo Precario/ The Precarious, “To recover memory is to recover unity:/To be one with the sky and the sea / To feel the Earth as your own skin.”

Recently I had the pleasure of listening to David Naimon’s conversation with Vicuña on Between the Covers where she discusses her art and publications. I love the idea of precarious art, “objects composed of debris, structures that would disappear.” I could cheerfully go down a rabbit hole to discuss this in further detail, but I highly recommend you listen to the podcast episode instead of having me rabbit on about it.

I am thrilled with the way the work in this book engages with reclaiming Indigenous knowledge and heritage, and connection with the natural world, and the way it engages with human rights and ecological destruction. To me, the anthology continues the curatorial practice of Poem Atlas, which connects artists with audiences and engages with the ongoing conversation of experimental work and play, as seen in such publications as AWW-STRUCK, eds. Isabel Galleymore, Caroline Harris and Astra Papachristodoulou, TEXT-ISLES, edited by Astra Papachristodoulou, and the delightful poetry scratch cards. There’s something so satisfying about the way Poem Atlas combines play, experimentation and engagement.

Image description: a fanfold of four cards: the front of three scratch cards and the back of one of the cards, which look like those scratch cards you get for lotteries. front text: Which of the Following Elements Will Guide You Today? Foil gold circle/ three waves/TEXT: Mini Poems About The Elements by Astra Papachristodouou, Marama Salsano and Lara Felsing. Back of one card: £1, partially covered instructions and UPC symbol.

The idea for the anthology came when the three writers were at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity to attend residencies, Astra for an independent poetry residency as a Fleck Fellow and Lara and Marama to attend Akunumusǂitis, an Indigenous Arts Residency that took place in 2023.

I delight in the way friendships can lead to art-making and sharing. In Judith: Women Making Visual Poetry I refer to Mirella Bentivoglio: and cite this quote:. ‘Bentivoglio’s curatorial endeavors transformed the art world by making connections among women—what Italian feminists refer to as ‘fare cultura fra donne’ or creating culture among women.’ Leslie Cozzi, Curatorial Practice and the Language of Italian Feminism in the Work of Mirella Bentivoglio. I am enthralled with the way women and non-binary artists working together create and foster cultural activity.

Visual poetry anthologies can sometimes be quite narrow in their consideration of what is visual poetry. This anthology, like Judith, includes sculpture, painting, craft, hand-stenciled work, collage, painting, installations and more. Earlier anthologies often avoided craft and art in their surveys of visual poetry and therefore erased a lot of work being done by women.

The anthology includes not only the work and biographies of each contributor, but also a statement about the work, materials used and the way in which it engages with the world. There is also a fascinating conversation: “Three Pacific Writers from Aotearoa discuss Indigenous languages and visual poetry” between Māori writers Marama Salsano, and Ammon Hāwea Apiata, and Rotuman writer Mere Taito.

In this conversation they share their struggles with trying to ensure that Pacific Indigenous languages are not erased by the Eurocentric nature of “white-castle writing,” that centers “gods of literature.”

They discuss the treatment of Indigenous languages in Western publications. They express their own attempts to work in their languages, and to create opportunities to use them. They also discuss adding visual aspects to their writing and the tools that they use to integrate text with the visual. It is really exciting to hear how these applications and tools provide new possibilities for reading Indigenous texts.

“[…] I began experimenting with digital applications such as Canva, Camtasia, and Articulate Storyline in my doctoral research. I saw their enormous potential for creative writing that was particularly geared towards Rotuman or any language regeneration. With these digital authoring tools, text, sound, and image can be arranged in so many ways and therefore influence the numerous ways the Rotuman language can ‘be seen and heard’ in relation to English on a page. I can control and shift the ‘power’ of either language on a page through typeface play, font play, audio, text placement, or image insertion. It is addictive, this thing called control. It makes you feel like you are ‘playing God’ at the keyboard.” Mere Taito.

The work in this anthology is stunning and unique. I was particularly drawn to “The Singing of the Needle” by Ainu artist, Kohei Fujito, who is known for his active promotion of Indigenous Japanese art, culture and history. The piece responds to the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant Meltdown, with its sculptural element, which is is comprised of 120 iron plates, which serve as a metaphor for the meltdown.

This work is full of beautiful and engaging visual poems from Lara Felsing’s painting “We Are Air, We Are Earth, We Are Fire, We Are Water, which depicts a medicine wheel that was created using medicinal plants and cast-offs from the forest, such as chagra, strawberry, dandelion and more, to the dynamic found collage poems of Justene Dion-Blowa, to the Māori banners of Marama Salsano which make a connection between the placenta and the land and “remind the viewer that Wāhine Māori bodies are ancestral, are archives of future and past generations. There are too many here to mention in this piece.

I highly recommend this anthology and congratulate the editors and contributors on such an important and inspiring work.

To Feel the Earth As One’s Skin is available from Poem Atlas.