Holly Simonsen

 

Lake Lines, An Eco-poetic Inquiry of Language as Element

Poet and artist, Holly Simonsen, offers an eco-linguistic inquiry into the relationship between language and landscape. Simonsen works under the thesis that ecologically disrupted sites offer access points for the human body to experience language as an elemental product of the earth. Studying language in this way focuses on the making of and interpretation of marks, some of our earliest impulses as a species. As an inevitable consequence of technological advances, human beings have lost their linguistic connection to the landscape. Simonsen’s work explores reconnecting language to the sensuous nature of the body in landscape as both artistic practice and environmental activism. She will address the essential questions of this inquiry in a short lecture followed by a poetic performance.

Holly Simonsen works in ecopoetic collaboration with her native landscape, The Great Salt Lake. She works on the page and off, incorporating installation art, performance art, sound experimentation, and ephemeral sculpture into her poetic practice. In 2010 she circumnavigated Great Salt Lake, a journey of over a hundred miles, as poetic ritual. Her manuscript, S AL T F LA T, was a 2012 finalist for the Yale Younger Poets Prize, among others. Her poems have been widely published in literary journals, including Hayden’s Ferry Review, Cutbank, and Ecotone, among others. She earned her MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts in Montpelier, VT (2010). She recently served fellowships at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, VT (2012) and at the Djerassi Resident Artists Program in Woodside, CA (2013). She currently teaches at Westminster
Long-billed dowitcher by Brooklyn Harris

Long-billed dowitcher by Brooklyn Harris