I Am the Maker of all sweetened possum (Amazon) is the strangely-capitalized, full-color collection of found poetry from the text of Julia Peterkin’s Scarlet Sister Mary published by Silver Birch Press. These visually-striking poems acknowledge their source while making new worlds for Peterkin’s words.
Found poetry is a method of creating poems from already existing work; my found poetry acknowledges its source material by creating the poem directly out of a page of text. Using exacto knives, white out, markers, paint, and even cross-stitch, the work has a homemade feel reflective of the source text. In the introduction, i mention that “there’s a handmade quality to Scarlet Sister Mary. seemingly every interaction happens while someone is making food, or mending garments, or picking crops. i strove to reflect that tactile feeling in my work. i wanted each piece to feel like you can see the marks left behind.”
sweetened possum rounds up poems that were created as part of the Pulitzer Remix – a National Poetry Month initiative hosted by The Found Poetry Review wherein each of 85 poets selected a Pulitzer prize winning work of fiction and created a poem for each day of the month.
Some reviews:
“A craftsman is only as good as his tools, and Moore employs the best in this innovative collection of found poetry. Using white-out, markers, paint, scissors and X-ACTO knives, he enters a dialogue with Peterkin’s text by excising, erasing and in one case literally stitching words together to create poems whose subjects are as creative and diverse as the methods he employs. Moore’s visually rich and lyrically sophisticated poems traverse the traditional boundaries of found poetry and are a significant contribution to the genre.”
– Jenni B. Baker, Editor-in-Chief of The Found Poetry Review
“It is rare, if not unique, to find such painstaking craft and depth of creative imagination so adeptly and seamlessly married with found poetry as in sweetened possum.”
– Winston Plowes, Poet
“Each erasure stands out visually, making the resulting poem that much more impactful. But, likewise, a close reading of the collected poems reveals a text that stands alone (although the visual artistry is so effective that you will not want it to).”
– Beth Ayer, Senior Poetry Editor of The Found Poetry Review
“moore imagines words in a setting beyond the blank page and gives them a visual context to communicate their truths.”
– Margo Roby, Poet
I Am the Maker of all sweetened possum is available for purchase at Amazon.
james (w) moore 