A Process Note
When I was searching for a form that would help me approach the voice of lava, I thought of erasure, a poetic technique that adds layers (of readings, of ink) over the existing text. During the process, the new poem emerges like a topography; the poem gains spatial depth. To me, the process of erasure shines light on the basic mechanism of all writing by directly indexing the relationship between reading and writing. To create the look of lava, I collaborate with graphic designer Kevin Tseng. It was Kevin who figured out how to make the poems look more like lava by layering the texts over photographs. We solicit photos from fellow artists and writers who travel to Iceland.
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Katy Didden is the author of The Glacier’s Wake (Pleiades Press 2013). Her poems and reviews appear in journals such as Poetry Northwest, Ecotone, Bat City Review, The Kenyon Review, Image, 32 Poems, The Spoon River Poetry Review, The Sewanee Review, and Poetry. She is an Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at Ball State University.