Book Launch: Theorem by Elizabeth Bradfield & Antonia Contro

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Folio Seattle is delighted to welcome Elizabeth Bradfield & Antonia Contro in an interview with Executive Editor of Poetry NW Editions Kevin Craft about their new book, Theorem.

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In Theorem, a collaboration by poet Elizabeth Bradfield and artist Antonia Contro, spare images, distilled text, and the resonant space between investigate the legacy of secrets acquired in childhood and held through a life. Part visual interrogation of shapes and forms, part lyrical bewilderment at the interface of memory and geometry, Theorem charts a luminous path of self-discovery that unsettles and upends. Theorem's collaboration opens possibilities beyond the simple life-changing epiphany. As John Yau writes, "The revelation is not in arriving at a destination but in beginning to map the journey, as well as in recognizing that one's perspective of past events changes as time goes by. This is the enigma of being alive and alert. This is what Theorem offers the willing reader---a place to return to in order to set out again and see what has changed." Using tropes drawn from math and science in both text and images, Theorem grapples again and again with how to find certainty and clarity within the chaos of lived experience.

About the Authors:

Elizabeth Bradfield is the author of the poetry collections Once Removed, Approaching Ice, Interpretive Work, and the mixed-genre Toward Antarctica, which pairs her photographs with brief, hybrid essays. Her poems and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Orion, and many anthologies. She has been awarded a Stegner Fellowship, the Audre Lorde Prize, and was a finalist for the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. Founder and editor-in-chief of Broadsided Press, she works as a naturalist and teaches creative writing and Brandeis University.

Antonia Contro is a visual artist whose work ranges from discrete objects to site-specific installations and collaborations that engage artists and practitioners from a wide range of disciplines. Her art explores the nature of knowledge, memory, and time. Contro’s exhibitions include Tempus Fugit at the American Philosophical Society Museum, Ex Libris at the Chicago Cultural Center, Closed|Open at the Newberry Library, and Descry at the Museum of Contemporary Photography. Contro’s work is in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, Block Museum, Harvard Art Museums, and Museum of Contemporary Art. Contro was awarded a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship, an Illinois Arts Council fellowship, and a doctorate in humanities honoris causa from Lewis University. 

About the Interviewer:

Kevin Craft lives in Seattle and directs the Written Arts Program at Everett Community College. His first book, Solar Prominence, was selected by Vern Rutsala for the Gorsline Prize from Cloudbank Books. A second collection, Vagrants & Accidentals, was recently published in the Pacific Northwest Poets Series of the University of Washington Press. Editor of Poetry Northwest from 2009 – 2016, he now serves as Executive Editor of Poetry NW Editions.