Some days, everything is a machine: The Poetic Practices of Mary Jo Bang

“Some days, everything is a machine, by which I mean remove any outer covering, and you will most likely find component parts…”

Mary Jo Bang, A Doll for Throwing (2017)

The exhibition, Some days, everything is a machine, traces the shifting, innovative, and increasingly hybrid creative practices of poet and translator Mary Jo Bang across analog and digital formats.

Materials include photographs, drafts of poetry manuscripts, annotated proof copies, correspondence, translation work, and published texts. The exhibition highlights Bang’s creative and collaborative processes as a poet and translator and includes photographs from her work as a visual artist. This exhibition not only maps a creative process as it existed in the past, but also how it is now and what it might become.

Bang’s multifaceted archive, created over decades of rapidly evolving technological change, illustrates the need to strategically address the evolving nature of the poet’s creative practice in order to sustain it for future generations.

This exhibition is part of the Mellon-funded Born-Digital Poetry: Planning for the Future of Literary Archives project. Curated by Born-Digital Poetry fellow and PhD candidate in Comparative Literature, International Writers track, Sarah María Medina, with special thanks to Born-Digital Poetry Fellow and Project Archivist Christa Kileff and Modern Literature Collection Curator Joel Minor.

Heading Image Credit: The Circus Watcher, Limited edition book sculpture, Mary Jo Bang, 2011.