HARRISONBURG, Va. (WHSV) – This week the Furious Flower Poetry Center is hosting its “Poetry Reading Series” in collaboration with James Madison University ‘Boundless Bound’ Symposium. The series features award-winning multimedia artist Krista Franklin.
Thursday’s series focused on Franklin’s book talk themed “Body’s Unbound” , and was followed by a poetry reading. Franklin said she hopes JMU students, educators, and community members came to her reading open to a variety of different opinions and expressions.
“I think a lot of the work that I make is deeply personal. I think some of it is a little bit political,” she said. “And so, what I’m hoping that when people come, they stay with an open mind, stay reflective, you know, stay in, also grounded in who they are as human beings in the world, and how my relationship to them, you know, shows up.”
She said that when she is writing poems she believes that the works have their own way of forming.
“I think that the poems decide that they want to be poems, just like the visual art decides that it wants to be visual art. So, you know, it’s really depending on what are you interested in saying,” she said.
Franklin said the collaboration with the poetry center is special to her, and she wouldn’t be able to be where she is without community and support.
“I consider myself to be the artist that poets made, and so it was deeply important to me to remain connected to poetry and connected to the incredible community of Furious Flower … Which is one of many communities that I had the pleasure of being involved with,” she said.
She said her message to young artists is to remain confident in what they believe and to never give up on their passion.
“I think a lot of times as writers and as artists, you know, the people who love us the most are somewhat protective of us and don’t want us to choose careers that they think would be unstable,“ she said. “And so what I would recommend to any young artist and any young writer in the world is to continue to presume it quickly to your passion, and tend to believe that what you have to say is something that needs to be presentable don’t let anything get away.”
Krista Franklin’s bio:
Krista Franklin is a writer, performer, and visual artist, the author of Solo(s) (University of Chicago Press, 2022), Too Much Midnight (Haymarket Books, 2020), the artist book Under the Knife (Candor Arts, 2018), and the chapbook Study of Love & Black Body (Willow Books, 2012). She is a Cave Canem fellow, a recipient of the Helen and Tim Meier Foundation for the Arts Achievement Award and the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant. Her visual art has exhibited at Western Exhibitions, DePaul Art Museum, Poetry Foundation, Le Crédac, Konsthall C, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Studio Museum in Harlem, Chicago Cultural Center, National Museum of Mexican Art, and as set dressing for music videos and national television programs. Her writing and art is in the collections of DePaul Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Library of Congress Rare Books and Special Collections, and the Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection + Archive. She is published in Poetry, Black Camera, The Offing, Vinyl, and a number of anthologies and artist books.
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