A Process Note
These embroidered erasures are part of an ongoing project I have called OBLITERATED TRACES, where I take pages from ancient/discarded library books—like the kind you find at Friends of the Library sales—and hand-stitch them into small poems. I think I started doing it accidentally, because I was learning how to do mixed media embroidery / I love work that incorporates text / I had a falling-apart book to experiment on / :: whammo. It’s tricky because the pages are so thin and fragile, and I’m fairly sloppy, so I have to be careful not to tear the pages as I’m sewing through them. Otherwise, it’s just a meditative thing to do that makes me feel slightly productive while I watch (perhaps a whole lot of) TV. These particular poems I made while visiting a friend who lives in Vermont on top of a snowy mountain.
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Processed with Rookie Cam
Processed with Rookie Cam
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Allison Titus is the author of two books of poems, three chapbooks and a novel, and the recipient of an NEA Fellowship in literature. She works at an advertising agency and in the low-res MFA program at New England College. With the poet Ashley Capps, she is at work on The New Sent(i)ence poetry anthology.