Jill Magi will be the first artist in residence at the DEPARTMENT OF MICRO-POETICS, VerySmallKitchen’s long distance residency at the AC Institute, New York. Jill will be in the space on Sat 11th, Wed 15h, Thurs 16th, and Sat 18th September, conducting her project SMALL TALK SMALL BOOKS.

Jill’s description of the project is as follows: 

SMALL TALK SMALL BOOKS is a four-day residency/poets retreat taking place in the DEPARTMENT OF MICRO-POETICS. Jill Magi will be in residence for four days, inviting four New York area poet publishers and editors to come and talk informally about poetry, respond to the text works installed in the DEPARTMENT, discuss the relationship between publishing and writing, and chit chat about other topics perhaps not related to poetry. 

A cross between coffee klatch, talk show, cooking show (where something is made together), and workshop, each SMALL TALK SMALL BOOKS session culminates in Jill and her guest making a small book together. The text for the small book—it may be prose, poetry, a survey, an essay or manifesto—comes out of the time they spend together talking, responding, and doing some writing together. 

The small book will be formatted there on the spot, printed out in a small batch, and stapled together.  Copies of these books–a small box set–will be kept at the DEPARTMENT “on file,” and sent to the U.K. for The Pigeon Wing sister exhibition. Others will be distributed under the auspices of SONA BOOKS, a chapbook press organized by Jill Magi, and also according to the poets’ desires.

The SMALL TALK SMALL BOOKS schedule is as follows:

 11th: with Stephen Motika, poet and editor at Nightboat Books

15th: with Jennifer Firestone, poet and editor of Letters to Poets

16th: with Paolo Javier, poet and editor of 2nd Avenue Press

18th: with Sara Jordeno, visual artist/writer 

Jill has also contributed an installation work, that will be present in the space throughout the exhibition, which runs from Sep 9- October 16th. This invites reworkings to her book THREADS, according to the following score:

More about Jill’s work can be found on her website here, which documents both her own written and visual work and that of her small press, Sona Books. Her book TORCHWOOD is published by Shearsman books. Recent projects include the unfolding “text-image work-in-progess” LABOR, excerpts from which can be seen in PEEP/SHOW and Critiphoria. 

A correspondence with Cecilia Vicuna, part of the Letters to Poets project, can be seen here. 

More information on The Department of Micro-Poetics can be seen here.  Future residencies will include Kai Fierle-Hedrick and Rachel Zolf, and Paolo Javier.  More info to follow.