Saturday 21 August 2021

Klara du Plessis : part two

What are you working on?

I just finished a collaborative residency at Artexte with the U.K.-based artist, Kadie Salmon. We co-created a sculptural artists’ book in three parts, entitled, Incipit, Scree, Explicit. And so, over the past few months, I’d been writing a set of 20 experimental sonnets which belong to this work, pushing the project further, but also responding to Kadie’s visual work—a dialogue in creative growth. We’re hoping to exhibit the artists’ book in-person next year, if COVID19 allows, and while my writing process is mainly completed, I’m thinking of ways of publishing documentation surrounding the work or sharing it beyond the presence of the artists’ book itself. Otherwise, I’m working on three manuscripts. One is written translingually, also in collaboration, with Khashayar Mohammadi in English, Afrikaans, and Farsi. An excerpt was just published in Collusion Books. It hinges on the shared g fricative sound prevalent in both Afrikaans and Farsi, our respective first languages. This is a very playful work, but also has a lot to say about the interconnectivity of language and culture. It’s tentatively forthcoming in 2023. Independently, I’ve been working on a collection of long poems informed by my current doctoral research on poetry reading recordings and their archives, as well as my active practice of literary curation. Finally, I’m slowly compiling a book-length version of Unfurl—a collection of essays or informal literary criticism.

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