About me
Download my resumé
Los Angeles, CA
2019
Written by Robin Coste Lewis
Printed by Tiny Splendor, Los Angeles
Featured in Beside the Edge of the World
The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, Pasadena, CA
“In 1854, Thoreau published his now canonical Walden: Or, Life in the Woods. Well-regarded for its exploration of nineteenth-century subsistence living, Thoreau also included a chapter that explored the community of free Blacks living around Walden Pond long before he arrived. He titled this chapter “Former Inhabitants and Winter Visitors.” My poem below is an erasure of Thoreau’s chapter. Like Walden at the time of Thoreau’s experiment, for me this chapter contained a hidden call to the historical rediscovery of African American histories embroidering Concord, and hence, America. Therefore, in order to extend Thoreau’s experiment, I removed and rearranged several lines from Thoreau’s chapter in order to magnify, lyrically, the free black community that once lived there.”
From The Huntington’s website:
For writer Robin Coste Lewis, dialogue with the archives not only breathes new life into our experience of the world, but also revives the archives themselves. “The archives want us, need us, they are sick for our attention,” said Coste Lewis at the opening of the exhibition on Nov. 9, when she read from her poetry chapbook “Inhabitants and Visitors.” For her project, Coste Lewis did more than dialogue with Henry Thoreau’s Walden (The Huntington’s collection includes multiple draft manuscripts of Thoreau’s work)—she chose to directly inhabit his words. Using poetic erasure, a form of found poetry, she selectively deleted words and phrases from the source text to reveal new meanings and overlooked narratives. For one, Thoreau was not a lone resident at Walden Pond. “Thoreau writes about escaped slaves, free slaves that lived in the forest. I loved how their presence in and around Concord interrupted his fantasy of isolation,” shared Coste Lewis.
In 1854, Henry David Thoreau published his now canonical Walden. Regarded for its exploration of 19th-century subsistence living, the book also included a chapter that explored the community of free Blacks living in and around Walden Pond long before he arrived. He titled this chapter “Former Inhabitants; and Winter Visitors.” For Robin Coste Lewis this chapter contained a hidden call to the rediscovery of African American histories. For her poem, “Inhabitants and Visitors,” Lewis extended Thoreau’s experiment by erasing much of the text of his chapter and rearranging and reimagining the lines to emphasize, lyrically, the free Black community that once lived there. The poem will be published in a limited edition chapbook.
Robin Coste Lewis is Poet Laureate for the City of Los Angeles She won the National Book award in 2015 for her poetry collection, Voyage of the Sable Venus.
❸ After graduating Otis College of Art and Design, Rapid Nostalgia lives on. This image is a design rendered to look like a risograph print, a series of postcards depicting the various cold war era emergency sirens that still stand around Los Angeles today.
❹ The first edition of How to Give Your Work Away for Free, by Matthew Manos, featured a book sleeve that folded out into a small poster.