Call for Submissions

CO-Ex is a collaborative art guild. Our mission is to bring artists, makers, and designers alike together to problem solve, build, design, and co-create. CO-Ex contributors will have access to a network of connections, a personal profile, and the call for submissions of ongoing collaborative projects. Think of this as a home for ideas, support, and feedback—for projects big and small, keeping creativity alive, well, and in good company. 

Wild Things: collection 1
This first collection will focus on the intersection between poetry and visual arts, using Stevie Howell's Never saw a wild thing feel sorry for itself. To contribute to this project, artists must first read the collection's chosen poem and respond creatively in their medium of choice. The following is a non-exhaustive list of points of reflection to be considered by the artists of this collection:
  • Thematic interpretation: 
    • Love, heartbreak, and moving on
    • Mercy
    • Personal journey
    • The wildness in others and self
  • Poetic structure:
    • Line breaks
    • Page breaks
    • Rhythmic structure
    • Epigraph 
  • Specific passage:
    • "you Stoic, you stone"
    • "It aches malignant"
    • "Mercy can be misplaced as easily as keys"
    • "I never saw a wild thing/ feel sorry for itself"
  • Language and word choice:
To submit your work for consideration in Wild Things: Collection 1  we require a photograph or digital copy of the work as well as an artist statement to be sent to coexart@gmail.com. The artist statement should briefly describe the relationship between the artist's submission and the poem. We invite contributions from all artists, but once a submission period closes, a selection of the submissions will be made by a panel of cross-disciplinary artists. All the chosen pieces will be featured in the online collection.

Submission deadline:  Monday November 30th 2020. 

Never saw a wild thing feel sorry for itself

                                                        Write, I beg you. No, do not write.
                                                                          - Kierkegaard, Repetition

You can't catalogue a litany.
I'm trying to figure out 
what to do w/the remainder of my life.
I taught for decades. Was demoted to subbing. But showed
up at the wrong schools. At 19, I earned a
basketball scholarship. But fell, ataxic.
One dose Remicade stripped myelin. Unsheathed
involuntary laugher at monotone
voices, & multiples like SALE! SALE! SALE!, or crowds.
I've worked as a counsellor, &
/
you can catalogue a litany.
I see the cracks in things. You
from afar, for instance.
Given time, something
will strike one of us. Then what? Bedside. Recognizing the
grip-strength of a certain hand before hearing
the voice. Who am I to play God? Not w/birth
or death or health-but forgiveness. Mercy can be
misplaced as easily as keys. Eyeglasses
in the fridge. Remote in the liquor cabinet.
I'd do anything to re-gift
/
this love for you, this empathy, this
pathetic mimicry, to
inject concrete into sponge, remodel as
bone. It aches malignant, but I admire w/my whole
heart that you won't miss me, or won't say so, or
won't feel moral, or won't suffer regret-you
Stoic, you stone. I never saw a wild thing
feel sorry for itself, the way I should know
better, the way you don't.  If I'm wrong
about what "they" feel, 
I'd be the last to know. 

Text by Stevie Howell, from I left nothing inside on purpose
http://steviehowell.ca/

This poem was originally inspired by a poem by D.H. Lawrence.

Self-Pity

I never saw a wild thing
sorry for itself.
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough
without ever having felt sorry for itself.