hello, hi, welcome to conVERSEverse 🌱

theVERSEverse poetry community did a lot last year.

this year, we are refocusing by revisiting what we’ve accomplished – celebrating our efforts and the path that brought us here, the path we carved, the path along which we met all of you.

conVERSEverse is part of that ritual of rereading, and we are happy to have you as part of the journey. let’s dive in 👇

a glimpse of le travail des rêves by aurèce vettier

le travail des rêves by aurèce vettier blends dreams and memories to express the deepest vulnerabilities of the human experience. symbols of grief, love, awe, mystery, fear, and power emerge from the conversation between aurèce vettier and the algorithm he trained on the visual record of his life.

theVERSEverse’s Elisabeth Sweet (@speciesofvalue) sat down with aurèce vettier to unpack the story behind this ethereal work. the full interview will be published in Le Random Editorial during Bright Moments Paris. for now, we are delighted to share a glimpse of this conversation with readers of conVERSEverse.

poetry = public work of art

should poetry be a public good? Marie Howe - poet and former NY State Poet Laureate - once said, “Poetry stops us and gives us something in common. I still believe that we could get poetry more into the public world.” in this article, Shannon Chen See (@watchensee) explores the case for poetry as a public work of art through the lens of our recent involvement at IGNITE 2024, a public Art + Light Festival in Florida produced by MAD Arts and The Broward County Cultural Division.

at IGNITE, we played with new ways for the public to experience poetry with 3D holoboxes, and re-read POESÍA DE PROTESTA, a collection featuring 10 Spanish poems written by Hispanic women surrounding themes of protest in all its forms.

poetry in the wild

• no one captures the poetic versatility of beeswax quite like Astra Papachristodoulou. Astra is currently exhibiting two works in Words from the Wild: the Nature of Poetry at Royal Holloway University of London. visit Bee Swarm and Selected Variations for Bees now through March 24, 2024.

• Imperfect Lovers by Nathaniel Stern will make you wonder and lament the human condition to love. In this continuous, onchain performance, the Imperfect Lovers each allocate a portion of themselves to the other, always losing a bit of their balance in the process. they give until they have nothing left, and even then, they will try to give more. the quiet release of Imperfect Lovers is set for February 23.

• we’re celebrating the publication of SILENCE: LECTURES AND WRITINGS by Derek Beaulieu. the book is a visual response to John Cage’s SILENCE: LECTURES AND WRITINGS, a collection of essays building upon his iconic piece 4′33″. Beaulieu has deleted all the text except the punctuation marks—which visually represents breath, pauses and breaks.

• “Play 1966” is from Victoria Chang’s forthcoming book WITH MY BACK TO THE WORLD, to be published by The New Republic and set to release April 2, 2024.

reread: our 2023

In 2023, we curated and produced a major exhibition, POÈME SBJKT. With our wonderful partners aurèce vettier and L'Avant Galerie Vossen, we wrote and published a catalogue to go with it. In Paris on the left bank, at a rare book gallery called Librairie Métamorphoses, the exhibition lived from May to June, inviting all to consider the past, present, and future of a poem.

We eagerly accepted the invitation to curate an exhibition of poetry on Feral File, a critical platform in the digital and contemporary art space co-founded by Casey REAS. FeralVerse, poetry of the body and the earth, premiered during National Poetry Month 2023. Twenty important poets and artists collaborated to create the first collection of poetry on Feral File.

In line with long histories of protest poetry, we, with curator Gladys Garrote, organized POESÍA DE PROTESTA, an exhibition of poetry in Spanish written by women and visually interpreted by artists working in web3. Our dear friends at Refraction commissioned and exhibited Part 1 in Miami 2022. Part 2 exhibited at Proof of People NYC in 2023, thanks again to Refraction and another dear friend of theVERSEverse, VerticalCrypto.

We onboarded Allen Ginsberg to web3. With the support and guidance of his Estate, we explored the poetry and photographs of one of history’s greatest literary heroes with tools at the edge of technology. Unit London exhibited the inaugural work in a stunning online display.

Over the summer, we had an open call for submissions to our inaugural COMMUNITY ANTHOLOGY. Over 70 people submitted, and Odd Writings accepted our invitation to curate. Through George’s diligent work and the poets’ dedication, we published the anthology in early August.

none of this would have been possible without all our amazing partners or all of you.

gratitude to the Tezos Foundation for awarding us a $50,000 grant which will give us time + space to reread. the grant covers operating costs and planning the production of a very special event we have coming at the end of the year. special thanks to Valérie Whitacre for her stalwart effort and early belief in us.

thanks for being on this journey with us.

here’s to nurturing + cultivating poetry in 2024 🖤