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The Chapbook Interview with Julie Brooks Barbour on retellings

Posted on July 28, 2014

How did the series of poems in Earth Lust start—with a phrase, a sentence, a character, or something else?

It started with a quote from Rebecca Lee’s book Bobcat and Other Stories: “If I were willing to see the simplicity, the purity, of my own desire, then I also had to see the entire landscape—the way desire rises from every corner and intersects, creates a wilderness over the earth.” At the time I read Lee’s book, I was also reading Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her by Susan Griffin, which discusses woman’s body as a landscape man wants to tame. The two merged to make me consider how women navigate the landscape of desire within our culture.

I love that Earth Lust is influenced by fairy tales and includes a retelling of “The Maiden without Hands.” Were you ever scared to experiment with retellings?

Yes! I admire the work of many contemporary women writers who experiment with retellings, so I wasn’t sure if I was up to the task. I was a Classical Studies major in college, and attempted to retell various myths during an independent study with a poetry professor in my senior year. At the time, this work turned out to be more difficult than I thought; I did not take into account that I would have to re-imagine the story to retell it. I put that work aside, uncertain if I would ever pick it up again. About four years ago I started reading the work of Jeannine Hall Gailey.

I fell in love with She Returns to the Floating World, her collection of Japanese fairy tale poems. Gailey rekindled my interest in retellings. Since then, I’ve been paying attention to the retellings of other writers, but I never thought I could do it, or that I would be able to find a way to retell fairy tales that would be interesting to me, let alone anyone else. There’s such a rich history of this work in literature, be it myth or fairy tale, and I wasn’t sure I had anything to add to the conversation. If it weren’t for Susan Griffin, I don’t think I would have had the desire to get started. I needed to have a fire lit under me to take on such an historical task.

Marriage is a theme in Earth Lust. How does motherhood inspire your work? Is it difficult to balance family life with the writing life?

Since I am the mother of a daughter, I am constantly reminded of the transitions women make from girlhood to womanhood. When my daughter was an infant and toddler, I thought more about the bond between mother and child. Now that she’s older, I find myself thinking about adolescence and the early years of womanhood. Much of what my daughter experiences inspires me to think and write about my own past, but also how women connect through shared experiences.

It can be difficult to balance family life with writing life. I’ve learned to adapt, as every age has its own challenges. I learned early on to take spare moments when they presented themselves, so now I can write whenever I have free time.

In Earth Lust I adore the tension created in the chapbook by the line, “Off to the side were other roads.” Can you talk about desire and longing in this collection?

I wanted this chapbook to look not just at the ways we navigate desire, but also at our own desires. While there are poems about the dangers of desire, there are also poems about the longing to be noticed as well as what outsiders think we should want. If we don’t want the things we’re told to want, how then do we live our lives so they reflect what we value? And how do we inch out of the expectations of others? The characters in these poems are caught up in societal roles but many of them break free: the Minstrel’s Daughter chooses to live in the forest, away from her father, and the Woman without Hands finds a way to have physical contact with her infant even though her hands have been taken from her. A woman puts herself in a vending machine by choice: it is her only escape from the colorless countryside in which she lives. These other roads are opportunities the characters take, if only by moonlight.

Who were the writers you admired when you first started writing? Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Randall Jarrell, and H.D.

What is inspiring you these days? The stories of Franz Kafka and Lydia Davis. Sherlock. Photographs of abandoned houses.

How are you trying to get better as a poet? By experimenting and writing outside my comfort zone. I like to challenge myself as a poet. I can only hope it improves my writing!

Your chapbook credo: Little books give poets the chance to experiment.

Number of chapbooks you own: 34 (and counting)

Number of chapbooks you’ve read: 24

Ways you promote and serve other chapbook poets: Through Facebook and Twitter, and mentioning their work to my students and other poets

Where you spend your chapbook earnings: On bills or on books by other poets

Your chapbook wish: That more people read chapbooks. It’s a great way to be introduced to the work of a poet.

Residence: The Upper Peninsula of Michigan

Job: Assistant Professor of English

Chapbook education: The chapbooks of Angela Vogel and Sally Rosen Kindred

Chapbook Bio: Julie Brooks Barbour is the author of Small Chimes (2014) and two chapbooks: Earth Lust (forthcoming 2014) and Come To Me and Drink (2012). She is an Associate Poetry Editor at Connotation Press: An Online Artifact and Poetry Editor of Border Crossing. She teaches composition and creative writing at Lake Superior State University.

Collaborate Artist Interview: Sally Deskins on the female form

Posted on July 9, 2014

You grew up in Oregon and Nebraska. What was that like? How did it influence your desire to be an artist?

Well I lived in Oregon twice growing up, and Missouri for a few years as well. Most of my upbringing was in Omaha, perhaps twelve or so homes/apartments total. My upbringing was the foundation for myself and art, so it in fact impacts it quite a lot, in ways I really can’t even express, remember or understand. But perhaps here I can start with this fact—moving frequently—kept me on my toes, taught me to see and understand ways of living differently. I was also raised with foster children and foreign exchange students. My parents are from opposite ends of the United States, and my extended family has always been spread around the states as well, so constantly seeing different ways of living made me recognize and accept different perspectives. I’ve always been an introvert, always listening and seeing. As both of my parents are creative in their own ways, as well, I learned to define “artist” broadly. My brother was often lauded the “talented artist” growing up, drawing clever comic strips and caricatures. I actually fell into theatre and loved it, starting my own “theatre club” in elementary, which I directed for a few years. In high school my shyness took over, I didn’t even want to draw in front of people, but I enjoyed journalism, and sewing, where “coolness” or “being the best” didn’t take precedence. Maybe it was all in my head. Anyway, the actual lands of Oregon, Nebraska and Missouri, I can’t actually articulate their environmental impact on me any more than my traveling anywhere. It has been more the people and direct experiences—perhaps though, the Midwest instilled in me a strong work ethic—which, if you’ve lived anywhere else, you will then appreciate. And, there is nothing like the Oregon beach, the coolness, the breeze, the free feeling it brings and back down to earth.

Who were the artists you admired when you first started making art?

Well, way back when I wanted to be a fashion designer, it was Anna Sui. I loved her quirky, dark designs—culturally inspired and beautiful for being edgy. When I read about Marcel Duchamp in high school art history class, I fell in love with the whole Dada art movement (or non-art, effectively). When I switched to being an art major in college, I was really inspired by Jim Dine who is considered part of the “Neo-Dada” movement, but I didn’t think technicalities. I loved his expressive line quality, his personification of robes, hearts and tools. I still do. I also admired Alice Neel, her very real and patchy portraits of her friends and family, not prettified, just existent. I’ve always loved the expressionists, too. Oskar Kokoschka was one of my favorites who played with the female body, as were Gustav Klimt, Henri Matisse. (Of course here I’m talking purely aesthetically, not of their personalities or personal lives.) Different artists impact me now more specifically, but those were the artists I looked to from the start. Quite honestly, since women are notoriously skipped over in art history books I did not learn of many women in art until I began doing the work myself! I never was a huge fan of Georgia O’Keeffe until recently (perhaps because in eighth grade my teacher had us try to draw a flower like her and I was so frustrated mine turned out to look like a pink chewed up piece of gum), or Judy Chicago even. My parents had a “Women in Art” coffee table book, and perhaps a Mary Cassatt print on the wall, growing up, but I didn’t really appreciate that until later. After undergrad and when I came back to drawing, Omaha based artist Wanda Ewing was (and continues to be) a huge inspiration for me artistically and personally (see my writing about her on Les Femmes Folles here).

How do you start a new series—with a theme, an image, a question or with a material, a technique, a color? Or something else?

With the collaborative work I’m doing with you, that starts with reading the poetry! J I suppose each series is different and depends on what is going on with my life personally, and what art supplies I have on hand. With my self-portrait series I did in college, I don’t know if I knew I was doing that. It just ended up being what I drew over and over, before I was assigned to do one. I was my natural subject since I guess I was also “finding myself” in a matter of speaking. After my hiatus and having babies, I came back drawing my babies over and over.

Yearning to get outside of baby-mode for a bit and try to almost re-find my Self and my Own Body, my next series doing body prints was another form of self-portraits. I came to this after doing some art-modeling and seeing an exhibit of Yves Klein’s “Anthopometries” series. I used my children’s finger paint and whatever paper I had, and went at it. This was also the same time I started my journal Les Femmes Folles, interviewing women in art, as I enjoyed hearing about other women’s work and their finding their way, I began to find my own. With this first series I call “Voice” (after the group exhibit I co-curated with Megan Loudon Sanders) I used some of their quotes and texted them onto my body prints to put another layer on the series. Upon the first exhibit of this series, I found more people querying about my role as mother and how my artwork might impact this, rather than the work itself. Thus was born my next series “What Will Her Kids Think?” again with body prints and text from famous and infamous women artists who are mothers about this very issue.

My children were growing as well. I would color and paint with them. I became interested in their very gendered imagery from their children’s books, as well as their lovely, carefree brush strokes and color choices. Again, I used what I had and began drawing figures on the many “leftover”/ “recycle-pile” pages.

Most recently with this next collaboration with you for Leave of Absence, I began with your poetry on the topic of trees. I knew I wanted to utilize body prints but in a different way—more twisted and more abstracted parts of the body and maybe some leaf-prints as well. I knew I wanted to also incorporate some of my children’s playful imagery too. So, once again, I began with what I had—taking stock of my paper, paint, and pages from my kids’ “recycle art” pile. I found paper that would work, and laid out the colors of paint I had, and went out in the yard quick to find some interesting leaves with my kids, and just painted and printed the whole pad of 30 pages. With these and with the pile of kids’ art, I sift thru them over and over to see in them—where a figure might lie, or text, or another small illustration to add to it.

I find the “use what I have” helps me focus—as you know, Madeline, I start many works at once, leave them, start others, and keep coming back, changing, many times until they are done. So having just a certain kind of paper and media, helps me focus just a little bit, enough to get an idea formed and out into space. So I suppose, all of that having been said, a new series starts with an image (body) and then with the material.

You’re starting a masters program in art history at the University of West Virginia with a teaching assistantship, correct? How do you anticipate teaching art history will impact your work?

Tenfold. It will help me with interviews like this, at the very least—ha! As one of the professors said to me, I have all of these ideas and projects, and this will help me understand and articulate them much better. In college, I minored in art history (and English) but really only touched the surface of what I’d really like to dig into—women in art, feminist art movements, modern art, art about the body—and how they did it all (theory/methodology). I am so excited (and nervous!) to dig into the books and inner workings of artists I have never uncovered before, to seek more inspirations and find new ideas and hopefully share them with others as well—continuing the spirit of Les Femmes Folles in a bigger, broader way.

How does motherhood inspire your work? Do you create art with your children? What’s that like?

Inevitably. I am so fortunate to have healthy, happy, supportive kids and husband, and I am still alive. I am so lucky to be able to practice my art while being a mother. It helps me make and create by not having time. It makes me appreciate it when I do. It brings me down to earth and around it—further enhancing my understanding and empathy for humanity, I’d like to think (most of the time). It makes me think of the future (with this next series about environment for instance), and stick to the present (process).

Yes, I create art with them, most of it just playful and process-oriented, but sometimes something comes of it, as I discussed above. Basically, it’s on the fly; what should we paint on today? Yesterday we found some rocks to paint on, the other day they painted on every one of their toy trucks and cars and examined each of their tire tracks. Sometimes it’s just coloring books or a piece of scrap paper in my purse. At the park, my daughter likes to gather things and create “sculptures” out of sticks, rocks, leaves, whatever she finds. Sometimes I’ll get out some toys in the corner of my studio so I can get a few things done, or let them work with my pastels on the floor. It works for a few minutes but mostly they like to see what I’m doing!

I am so thankful to be able to practice my art, do what I love, and see it from their point of view. These crazy little monkeys. Too, I hope they see part of what I do intrinsically in a feminist fashion—appreciating and accepting femininity and the female form, and me being a strong (when I can) woman doing what she loves. I recently read this quote by Maya Angelou: “I would like to be known as an intelligent woman, a courageous woman, a loving woman, a woman who teaches by being.” Says it perfectly; I think of this while I work and aspire to it. So yes, motherhood is a constant. It would be hard to separate these living beings I am literally a part of, and am responsible for their well-being’s.

Were you ever scared to experiment in art?

Oh yes, definitely. In college, I only used charcoal for the longest time, as I was afraid color would ruin my work. I would draw and erase for hours the same line with charcoal. Then when a professor “insisted”, I would only use 1-2 colors per piece. Then in another class, we “had” to use our whole palette, and mine turned into a mess, and after that I think I just sort of let it go. That is perhaps why I love the body prints, they’re just (mostly) uncontrolled expressions in paint. I still get that hesitation with drawing though, each stage I get worried I’m going to ruin it if I go further. I still love black and lots of white. With pencil I let it all out, as I love erasing and seeing the lines underneath. But it’s different with pen and paint (when I’m hand painting). Usually when I’m drawing with pen or paintbrush in hand, I just have to take a deep breath and pull it out.

early page layouts, LFF books

What do you think is at stake when people make art that challenges notions about the female form?

Everything and nothing. This is such a big question! Women have been utilizing the female form for eons but only recently (within past 50-60 years) has their work been brought to light (and still not very brightened light). I get asked “why don’t you use the male form in your work?” and right now, I just am not drawn to create work about the male form (but actually perhaps in the near future)—but maybe that is because I have seen so many nude females in art history, the subject is ingrained in us. Maybe, on this same note, I have seen so many nude females depicted in art history by male artists, I want to contribute alongside other women artists, to show our own perspective of our own bodies. Art plays a major role in history and defining and describing our culture, and also by challenging current and past conventions. Thankfully, artists like Lorna Simpson, Judy Chicago, Ana Mendieta, Carolee Schneeman, Yoko Ono, Marina Abramovic, Hanna Wilke, Michalene Thomas and Wanda Ewing have used the nude female form to take on issues of identity, race, sex and class. With all of the negative imagery of the female form in media, add-to, the quieted and cloaked-over women-defined female form, alternative views are necessary to create a feminist, accepting world for women—as we are women by our bodies first.

With two young children, is it difficult to balance family life with making art?

Oh sure, “how do we do it all?” or whatever. There isn’t really “balance” just being and doing. Sometimes I get obsessed with a project or idea and I can’t focus when I’m present with the kids. Sometimes when I’m blocked artistically I’ll endlessly sit at my studio table looking at pictures of my kids or just play with them in the studio. But I figure, if at least I get one line drawn, one paragraph written or chapter read, I did something. And I try to make moments count with family, as well, sometimes blending the two. Everyone has to balance so we all make those choices, I suppose, though it is different when other’s lives’ are at stake, whether children, elderly or other loved ones. Again, thankfully I have healthy and supportive children and husband. Still, at times, it can be a guilt-game, either way.

What is inspiring you these days?

Along with your poetry for this upcoming project, fresh air. Though I don’t think about living in Nebraska necessarily impacting me thru its plains, living in West Virginia seems to thru its hills. When I was growing up, I dreamed of being a fashion designer living in New York with a flat and a garden on the roof. I never thought I’d be living on two acres in the hills of West Virginia with two children and a husband J. But now that I’m here I feel it suits me—I’m a bit rough, gritty (not to mention of course I love my family), and the hills constantly remind me of how small I am in the world. Really, I am still alive; why is that? Why am I so lucky? I am thinking; what artwork am I really supposed to be creating, what projects am I meant to be doing? I look at the trees and breathe in each moment, my kids learning to ride bikes, my husband painting the house, pause, and wonder.

How are you trying to get better as an artist?

Going to graduate school, for one. Visiting art shows, reading about and interviewing other artists, listening to people’s critiques (getting reviewed!) and I suppose, just keeping at it!

Number of art pieces you own: I have no idea! Maybe 20-30 (this does not count my own, and does count small pieces).

Number of art pieces you admire: ? Infinite!

lff2013
Ways you promote and serve other artists: All right let’s toot my own horn some more! My journal, of course, Les Femmes Folles, promotes artists of all genre/media (poets, performers, activitsts however you define) and the Les Femmes Folles Books promotes writers and artists via the anthologies, and the series of collaborative books that begun with our collaboration, Intimates and Fools (stay tuned for more!). I curate exhibits, readings and other events. I write reviews and articles for other publications of visual art exhibits, projects and news, and book reviews, exclusively (as of late) art and books by women. I’m constantly pitching story ideas to new publications about art and writing by women. I would like to do more though.

Where you spend your art earnings: That’s a laugh, isn’t it. The money is already spent on its frame! Any art earnings are spent on the gas to get to the gallery, or future art supplies, or lunch for the family, or a cocktail afterwards. As for LFF Books, I do donate a portion of the proceeds to the University of Nebraska-Omaha Wanda Ewing Scholarship Fund, to honor my late friend, mentor, stellar artist and inspiration behind Les Femmes Folles. (Donate at nufoundation.org.)

Your artist wish: Just one? Ha. I don’t know, perhaps that art would be more of a mainstream thing like football—then we can really make a difference—I guess on top of that, that women’s perspectives seen through the art with which is on the front page regularly, would make a major difference with respect to women (and thus men) in everyday life. Could you imagine (most) people reading about (and thus perhaps appreciating/taking part in) non-violent expression every day? Dreamworld.

Residence: West Virginia

Job: Artist, Editor, Writer

Education: BA, University Nebraska-Lincoln; MPA, University Nebraska-Omaha

Bio: Sally Deskins is an artist, writer, mother, wife and feminist enthusiast. She is a Teaching Assistant in the Art History Graduate Program at West Virginia University. Deskins’ art explores womanhood, motherhood and the body via body-prints, drawing and text from her life and others’. Her work has been exhibited in Omaha, New York, Philadelphia, Charleston, Pittsburgh, Ohio and Chicago; and published in Certain Circuits, Weave Magazine, and Painters & Poets. She has curated exhibitions, readings and performances centered on women’s perspective and the body. Her writing has been published internationally. She is founding editor of LES FEMMES FOLLES an organization supporting women in art. She has published three LES FEMMES FOLLES anthologies of art and writing. Her first illustrated book Intimates & Fools, with poetry by Laura Madeline Wiseman, was published in 2014 by Les Femmes Folles Books. She is currently working on her second collaborative book, Leave of Absence: An Illustrated Guide to Common Garden Affection. She is also currently exhibiting in a group show at Taylor Books’ Annex Gallery in Charleston thru July 31; and will be exhibiting a solo exhibit at Future Tenant Gallery in Pittsburgh in August.

Intimates & Fools: A Collaborative Book with art by Sally Deskins

Posted on July 1, 2014

My collaborative book with artist Sally Deskins was released January 1st this year and today is the book’s Half Birthday. Hooray! Happy Half-Birthday Intimates and Fools! I thought I’d post an update on all the fun things and happenings that have been going on.

The book couples poetry and body art and illustrations by Sally Deskins. Intimates and Fools intimates the complicating pairing of the female form and cultural notions of beauty while playfully seeking to bare and bear such burdens of their weight. The poetry explores notions of the bra and its place near the hearts of women, while contemplating literary and pop cultural allusions and illusions of such intimate apparel. The body art and illustrations make vivid and bright the female form while calling into question the cultural narratives on such various shapes we hold dear, be they natural, consumer, or whimsy.

Sally and I have had the opportunity to talk about Intimates and Fools in recent interviews. With Julie Brooks Barbour Sally talked about the process of adding the text to her art for Connotation Press.

To be honest, each page’s process was different. I didn’t originally start from beginning and go to the end. I selected phrases and sentences I liked, drew images, scanned them into the computer and tried out fonts, but nothing clicked. So I decided to write it myself, first writing the history of the bras in pencil on page one and two. I wasn’t happy with my own handwriting of course, so I erased that, and liked the erased, raw look, and kept some of that in there, as you can see.

Forthcoming in AMRI we discussed the entire collaborative process with Kristina Marie Darling. Specifically, I talk about thinking about how a poem might appear in a book when coupled with poetry. Here’s another sneak peak.

Ultimately, Sally decided to handwrite the poems—a decision I loved. When she illustrated the poem, she broke the lines where it made sense from a visual artistic and literary perspective. It was a “changing, shifting, and expanding” moment for me as a poet, because her visual presentation of the poem was not what I had typed into the computer when it was my poem alone. And yet, this was a collaboration. Sally’s art was being transformed to tell a story about bras and suddenly, so was my poetry.

In Mixitini, this super cool journal that focuses solely on collaborations, we discussed the collaborative work we’d done with other artists and writers. Here’s a sneak peak.

My first collaboration felt organic, fun, and playful. I think there’s something fresh and delightful when art and poetry are combined. The interpretation of poetry that happens when paired with art offers a new way of looking at words and art.

Editor Mel Shapcott featured Intimates and Fools in Wild Women Rising. Sally talked about making body prints.

So at once, the real feelings of the paint on my body is utterly physical and resounds as the sensations are stamped onto paper or canvas. Too it is a means of working out all of the noise of body image — what I should look like according to magazines, movies, the clothing ads, my mind. In these prints, my body looks beautiful in the various acrylic colors. As I mix and swirl the paint on my body parts, the image comes out skewed and conceptual, and beautiful in this state — various colors, shapes, sizes. It is perhaps sensual, perhaps an object in itself, but not decried or distanced, violent or Photoshopped to some advertiser’s view of perfection. It is stunning in its complexity, simplicity and in definition yet materiality, a peaceful yet spirited view of the female figure.

In Blotterature we talked about our personal history with the bra and the research we did for the book. I discussed reading about the bra in college.

My first intellectual endeavor into bras was in college when I added a second major of women’s studies after taking one women’s literature class. I took scores of classes—sociology of gender, feminist theory, African American women’s literature—and somewhere in there I read The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls by Joan Jacobs Brumberg, a look at the ways in which girls have worked on improving themselves and how that has shifted from a focus on the personality to a focus on the body. One section on body projects made note of bras and I found it fascinating that all women didn’t always wear bras.

We talked about the collaborative composition in Storyacious. Sally discussed her creative process.

After reading Madeline’s poem, I decided to let it sit, scratch down visions and ideas, and make dozens of body prints in preparation. Instead of the larger torso body prints I had been doing for the gallery shows, I did smaller, page-sized prints of various body parts to allow closer focus and more pause and insight for each word.

Beyond written interviews, we gave radio interviews in It’s the Beat! (mp3 starts at 8:05-15:04), KIOS-FM, Omaha Public Radio, and The Joy Factor.

Our book has also been featured in Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, Painters & Poets, Best Dressed Wardrobe, Z-Composition,Luciferous, Daily Dose of Lit, Certain Circuits, and Miracle Ezine.

Intimates and Fools has been reviewed in [Pank], Busting and Droning Magazine, Ivory Owl Reviews, Broad Blogs, Underrated Reads, Luna Luna, and Connotation Press.

“Poet Laura Madeline Wiseman takes what every girl and woman has thought about her breasts and adds a imaginative twist. Artist Sally Deskins fun, contemporary-styled illustrations take it even further.”- Underrated Reads

“…for me what Intimates and Fools is aiming to get to the heart of, and often does quite handily: the struggle against both nature and the commodification of women, a struggle that is defined with and against sexuality, and a struggle that is far more complex than it at first seems. Wiseman and Deskins have created a deceptively pleasant collaboration here, one that is both arch and light-hearted, and which deepens the more it is read and pondered. There are few bra-wearers who won’t see themselves in these clever poems and illustrations; there are few readers who won’t look at bras, and the world, a bit differently after reading this book.” – Luna Luna

“Intimates and Fools is a visually stunning book. This insightful collaboration between poet Laura Madeline Wiseman and artist Sally Deskins gives us not only a look into the bras that hold women’s breasts, but uncovers the history and honesty of what women wear beneath their garments… Throughout, we never leave what holds up the breasts, what women desire in a bra, what women might do without them, even how these intimate garments are cared for over time. This is a book about the female body and what adorns it, what is bought and given away in so many forms.” – Connotation Press

“What we wear under our clothes tells a quiet story, as playfully and artfully explored in the book “Intimates and Fools,” with poetry by Laura Madeline Wiseman and artwork by Sally Deskins… The concept of having a book of illustrated poems dedicated to breasts and undergarments is charming and yet sweetly simple… The artwork of Deskins is so vibrant, with playful poems surrounding their form… the overall feeling from the collection is that of simple joys in these sacred garments we hold close.” – Busting and Droning Magazine

“Deskins’s own art, colorful sketches and body prints, unapologetically splash across the page in bright strokes while Wiseman’s handwritten prose snakes up and around, balancing and accompanying the art… It made me want to linger, to touch the page, run my hands across the color and script. It was more of an experience than just interpretation… it’s what’s just under the busy surface that’s most appealing: the wildly complex social constructs of female body, and the symbol of the bra as the ultimate carrier of all things female: shame, sexuality, strength.” – [Pank] Magazine

“Intimates and Fools is a cheeky, fun read…Laura Madeline Wiseman’s poetry will have you conspiratorially chuckling and each page of Sally Deskins’ painted illustrations are frame-worthy.” - Ivory Owl Reviews

“Women can be mistaken for their sexuality. Or, women can make their sexuality work for them. Intimates and Fools, with poetry by Laura Madeline Wiseman and illustrations by Sally Deskins, is a thought-provoking, conversation-starting coffee table book…Here, brassieres emerge as the main characters…In this love-hate relationship, bras just want a little appreciation. Don’t we all?”- Broad Blogs.

In March, I traveled to West Virginia where my collaborator currently lives. We had super fun reading together at a local art center there. In April, my collaborator traveled to Nebraska where I live. We gave two readings. At the Apollon, we read collaboratively.

Intimates and Fools has also been to readings in Chicago, South Dakota, and elsewhere. I will be giving a reading at MMLA in Detroit, MI about the collaborative process in the Fabricating the Body panel in November. Other recent readings are on our YourTube playlist.

Beautiful pages from Intimates and Fools with Sally’s original art have appeared in shows in galleries in Ohio and West Virginia, and will be featured in Sally’s series “What Will Her Kids Think?” in an exhibit at Future Tenant Gallery, August 8-24 in Pittsburgh. Pieces from that series also appeared at the Ohio University Eastern Campus, in St. Claireville, Ohio in February.

“Les Femmes Folles: WV” had a group exhibit at the Monongalia Art Center, Morgantown, West Virginia in March.

Intimates and Fools is available on Amazon and at readings and events. Check out Intimates and Fools from the library - Chattanooga Public Library,Chattanooga in TN; Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture at Duke University Library, The Jane Pope Geske Heritage Room of Nebraska Authors and Lincoln City Libraries in Lincoln, NE, Des Moines Public Library in IA. Or enter for a chance to win a copy in the Goodreads Book Giveaway .