KEITH WALDROP
collage


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Keith Waldrop is best known as the author of numerous collections of poetry including Transcendental Studies which was awarded the 2009 National Book Award for Poetry, and as co-founder/editor of Burning Deck Press along with his wife and fellow poet Rosmarie. He is also a collagist and has been showing his work at Po Gallery since 1991.

Keith's collages have been featured in No: A Journal of the Arts, o.blek, on and in the book, Bomb (accompanying work by Clark Coolidge) and on the covers of NuMuse, an anthology series of plays; a selection from his works have been collected in two art books. Along with his collage making, he is also a poet, playwright, filmmaker, novelist, translator and performer. He is a member of the College of Pataphysics and founding member of the John Barton Wolgamot Society, Wastepaper Theater and Shandy Hall. He holds the rank of Chevalier of Arts and Letters, presented to him by the French government.

In "A Matter of Collage" Waldrop writes that his collages, like some of his poems are "...made of materials as disparate as possible, picked because I liked their looks or, really, because they somehow called out to me...
When working with paper, my elements are usually torn rather than cut. A large proportion of the elements touch one or another edge, suggesting incompletion. There are tissues laid over some areas and in some cases I add paint or pencil - all of which lessen the distinctness of one element from another.... Collage is for me a way to explore, not necessarily the thing I am tearing up, but the thing I am contriving to build out of torn pieces. To the extent that there is a purpose to what I do, its end is the 'enjoyment of a composition' - a concern, as Whitehead notes, common to aesthetics and logic."

Press
Burning Deck at 50 – A Short History (pdf)
Some Review Comments on the Press (pdf)
Review: Several Gravities by Keith Waldrop (pdf)
About Keith Waldrop from "Several Gravities" (pdf)