in the words of Nas:

“no idea's original, there's nothing new under the sun
it's never what you do, but how it's done”

for this conVERSEverse, we’re celebrating the poets + writers whose works influence what we read & write today. starting today and throughout the month of April, we invite you to post a selfie of you with your favorite poem, book, chapbook, picture of a poet/author, hashtag #reVERSEverse + tag us @theVERSEverse. 

this edition, we’re covering:

• “on the value of rereading books” by Nicole Tallman

• “whose paths do you trace?” by Shannon Chen See

• from the gallery: FIFTY DAYS AT ILIAM by Christian Bök x Sarah Ridgley

• poetry in the wild (ft. NYC events if you’re in town)

let’s reVERSEverse.

“on the value of rereading books” by Nicole Tallman

“rereading books for me is like spending time with an old friend—the kind of friend in whose company I pick right up where we left off, even if we haven’t spoken in a while.” in this short essay, Nicole meditates on the value of rereading books, drawing connections between books she rereads - like Perfume by Patrick Süskind and Ariel by Sylvia Plath - and her poetry.

“whose paths do you trace?” by Shannon Chen See + theVERSEverse community

as poets, we know one of the best ways to improve our own writing is to read widely, to be inspired by others. we asked a few poets from our community about their inspirations to understand how they became the poets they are today. thank you Katie Dozier, Lorepunk, Odd Writings, and Elisabeth Sweet for sharing pieces of your poetry journeys with us 🤍

from the gallery: FIFTY DAYS AT ILIAM by Christian Bök x Sarah Ridgley

FIFTY DAYS AT ILIAM is a perfect example of how our poetry dialogues with and builds on the work of poets who came before us. Christian Bök prompted Sudowrite to compose ten lines of poetry, each line derived from the title of a painting in the series, ‘Fifty Days at Iliam’ by Cy Twombly (which was based on Alexander Pope's translation of Homer's Iliad). Sarah Ridgley then used her own algorithm to repeat each of these outputs in the form of handwritten flourishes.

poetry in the wild

• ✨ congratulations to Caridad Moro-Gronlier, who was just named Miami-Dade County’s new poet laureate

• 📙 THIRTY SIX by Pierre Gervois is a poetry book of 44 poems. Each poem is based on data extracted from anonymized interviews with members of the crypto community conducted with the author during the NFT.NYC conference.

• 🎊 The Wonder of it All by Anne Spalter was auctioned on Sotheby’s and acquired by the Centre Pompidou Museum in Paris! This piece is an epic abstract sci-fi voyage through a fantastical realm generated with the assistance of text-to-image-based custom AI tools.

• 💐 flowers to Lillian-Yvonne Bertram for being named a Foundation for Contemporary Arts grant recipient 

• 🌆 NFT.NYC events: 

that’s a wrap on conVERSEverse edition #2! If you enjoyed reading, please forward the newsletter to a friend, or take a few moments to give your (anonymous) feedback below:

• loved it! 🤍 - tell us what you liked

• it was okay 😔 - tell us how to improve

• it was bad 👎 - tell us why