“We feel the ebb and flow within ourselves. Our water molecules are pointed in the direction of the Moon.” Find out why the lauded poet CAConrad went to the least populated state in the U.S., Wyoming, and came back with a poem inspired by a star constellation ritual. A poem which he also reads in the video.
“Every evening I would look at the stars and create my own constellations. I wasn’t looking at the ones we all know. I wanted to form my own.” For the ritual he did in Wyoming, CAConrad created his own star constellations as well as entire sagas and mythology around them. From that he then made notes for the poems: “The Moon played a great role in that, and as the light grew, some of the stars in my constellation would fade. Then I would have the Moon help me create a new constellation.” CAConrad also argues that the Moon holds great power over us because such a large part of us is water, and as the Moon pulls the tides “we’re pulled along with it.”
CAConrad (b. 1966) is an American writer. His work includes ‘Deviant Propulsion’ (2006), ‘Advanced Elvis Course’ (2009), ‘The Book of Frank’ (2010), ‘A Beautiful Marsupial Afternoon: New (Soma)tics (2012) and ‘While Standing in Line for Death’ (2017). CAConrad has received fellowships from e.g. Banff, Ucross, RADAR and the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage. Apart from writing he also teaches his (Soma)tic Poetics method, which is “a poetry that investigates the seemingly infinite space between body and spirit by using nearly any possible thing around or of the body to channel the body out and/or in toward spirit with deliberate and sustained concentration.
CAConrad was interviewed by Kasper Bech Dyg at the Louisiana Literature festival at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark in August 2018. In the video CAConrad reads from ‘HEAD OUT WINDOW ON THE BAPTISM HIGHWAY’.
Camera: Klaus Elmer
Produced and edited by: Kasper Bech Dyg
Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2018
Supported by Nordea-fonden
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