Laraine Armenti

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Poetry Book Project

May 21, 2012 by Laraine Armenti, visual artist

books

Poetry Book Project

The Boston University poetry book project is an annual event for first year, second semester masters candidates. Each artist is randomly paired with a current or former poet in the writing program. The poets read their poems while the artists showed their books in a presentation on May 2, 2012.

I was paired with Jacob Strautmann and we chose his poem ‘Request, Upper Big Branch.’  The poem is a response to the April 5, 2010 coal mining disaster in West Virginia where twenty-nine men died in a massive coal dust explosion. Massey Energy corporation was found to be guilty of flagrant violations of Mine Safety and Health Administration regulations with tacit approval by inspectors.

Italics are used in the poem to quote a government document which stipulated that ‘Removal of the mantrips shall only take place under the direct supervision of an Authorized Representative of the Mine Safety and Health Administration.’  A ‘mantrip’ is a small vehicle, also referred to as a Jitney Personnel Carrier, used to transport people into and out of the mine; the Ellis Portal is the opening in the ground used to access the mine.

end papers

Finished books with hand-made methyl cellulose paste-paper and acrylic paint end papers

title page

ABOVE: Title page; below: first page of poem with sumi ink drawing

wrongful death

Request, Upper Big Branch

Wrongful death is a thin euphemism,

won’t cover an empty bed
or fill a pair of boots squatting on a stoop.

The wronged can’t chop wood or read,
can’t pack the truck and weep with those

authorized through tearing
the skein of living men from their lives,

representatives, many, whom you owe
what’s irreplaceable on this earth;

many, and they’ll not allow the removal
of the two Jitney Personnel Carriers

through the Ellis Portal. If the two mantrips,
symbols of men lost in the earth

to your production clock and false book,
cannot be removed under their own power.

Hear it again and know all you need to know:
if these two mantrips cannot be removed

under their own power, they cannot be moved,
and powerless West Virginia, pulled

over bedrock, curves inward
and orbits twin gravity wells

you would remove through the Ellis Portal,
a plan shall be submitted for approval

before any other extraction efforts of
the above mentioned equipment is [sic] made.

God knows a plan is necessary:
while you run coal from a tall building,

they step through the Ellis Portal
to wherever their welkin leads them.

welkin

Last page of poem with sumi ink drawing

end cap binding

End caps made from hand-made methyl cellulose and acrylic paint paste-papers

Below are a few steps in the bookbinding process:

cover

Covers

text sewing

Text block inner binding

binding

Set-up to drill binding holes

mock-up

Initial layout of text and art

Filed Under: Books, Drawing, Ink, Writing / Poetry Tagged With: poem, poetry

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