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PlatteForum’s
Creative Residencies!
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Jake Adam York, created "A Map of Denver" during his residency in April’s National Poetry Month. In this anthology project, he encouraged Denver's citizens to write about their city, their neighborhoods and lives, and to collect and publish those representations. With these writings Jake constructed a poetry installation across the walls of PlatteForum. He connected the poems utilizing various colors of strings and map pins, each representing a certain type of poem. The strings crisscrossed throughout the gallery space creating a map, a web that encompassed the writings of more than 90 writers. In addition, Jake wrote over 40 poems and culminated his residency with an all day poetry event that took place at various venues throughout Denver and concluded at the PlatteForum for a special reading and opening for the public to interact with the poetry installation.
We thank the Tattered Cover in Lodo for collaborating with PlatteForum during Jake’s residency on an event in which Jake invited several of Denver notables, including Mayor John Hickenlooper, to share their favorite poems with the public. We are pleased that the event was very well attended and was standing room only!
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Artist Statement
Maps — all that grid and direction, fold and unfold — records of places and of places related to places….
My grandparents’ maps: when they drove the country each summer, my father would take their map from the desk and tape then on the wall to trace their route in red marker, till the maps became stories of their going, a record of their travel, not just a collection of travels long forgotten or yet-to-be-tried.
Let us turn map to story. Let us translate the maps’ interest in cardinal direction, relation, orientation into beginning, middle, end. Let plot or plat become plot, the longitudinal sentences measure our position and progress and plot.
Let us tell our city, and let our accounts become both record and direction for those who come after or come after us. Let us represent our city to our city. Let us be our city saying our city to itself. Let us be the city writing its own book, own map, itself, an unfolding and folding in folds of paper, hand, and mind.
Artist Bio
Jake is an Assistant Professor
of English at UCD specializing in American Literature,
Creative Writing and History and Theory of Poetry. He
has published over 50 poems in the past 4 years in leading
journals such as Southern Review, Shenandoah,
Greensboro Review, Crab Orchard Review,
Gulf Coast and Quarterly West. Has won numerous
awards including a 2002 Colorado Council for the Arts
award and was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He has
served as a contributing editor for Shenandoah,
Editor in Chief of the Thicket and co-editor
for storySouth. He is the founder of denverpoetry.org
and an organizer of poetry festivals for the Denver
community.
Links to other sites where Jakes work can be
viewed:
thediagram.com
pages.slc.edu
www.typomag.com
| PlatteForum’s Creative Residency Program builds on the tradition of artist residency programs around the world and is unique to Denver. The program offers the public an opportunity to see a body of work being developed by an artist, and then experience the culmination of that work in exhibitions and performances. Each residency incorporates an intensive workshop for under-served youth, which builds on the artist’s forms and for concepts. The artists share their passions for the creative process with the youth. This collaboration is the cornerstone of our learning programs. |
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