cyanotypes and Poetry
By Amanda Lichtens tein and Leah Sobsey
WRITING
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Speaking through the sun
“Everyth ing is fleeing to ward
i ts presence.” Rober to Juarroz
For months I’ve been obsessed withthe above quote by Mexican poet Roberto Juarroz. I
started writing it everywhere – as the signature to my email, on notes to friends, and in
little spots around my office. It was the kind
of idea that was planted like a seed and grew
a thousand branches. I started thinking about
absence and presence, energy and transformation. What is fleeing exactly? How do we
know when we get there? And what gets lost
along the way?
Break Arts’ mission is to inspire young
people around the world to co-author the
stories of their lives. They achieve this mission
by partnering with schools and communities
to expand notions of literacy and narrative
through text, image and performance projects. They believe in expressing stories as an
essential force in living and sustaining
meaningful, interconnected lives.
www.breakarts.org
The line haunted me. A few months later,
when Leah Sobsey and I began talking about
leading text and image workshops with Habla
in Merida, I knew I wanted to use this poem in
some way to organize our workshops. In many
conversations between Greensboro and Chicago, Leah and I started making connections
between the ideas in Juarroz’s poem and the
antique photographic process of cyanotypes.
Just as Juarroz’s poem pushes the reader to
think about fullness and emptiness, absence
HABLA BEST PRACTICE HANDBOOK 2010
and presence, so do cyanotypes, which depend on the energy and heat of the sun to
reveal or hide images placed on sheets of chemically coated fabric or paper. A transformation happens. Both the poem and the process
itself ask us -- simply put -- what makes a thing
– a thing? Where does its essence reside?
Leah and I planned a text and image workshop that would include a poetry warm up,
close analysis and discussion of a poetic text,
the cyanotype process, and a closing reading/
reflection. Traditionally, cyanotypes entail
placing objects from the natural world onto
treated paper, exposing the paper to sunlight,
and removing those objects to reveal its afterimage. But Leah explained the magic of using
transparencies and black sharpies to write or
copy text, placing it flat onto treated paper,
making it possible to expose original handwriting and poetic text. The possibilities were
endless and we couldn’t wait to try this with
workshop participants.
For the poetry warm up, we played with the
idea of “conditionals” or “poetic logic” to fuel
our thinking about absence and presence.
How does one thought complete another?
We decided to play a Surrealist game in which
two players invent poetic sentences by one
player creating an “if/when” phrase and the
other deciding on a “then”phrase without
knowing or seeing the other half. To play this
game, you can either write your part down
or simply think it. When both players have
decided on their part, the team reveals the
thought in its entirety. You can also play this
game by both players secretly writing an “if/
when” phrase, folding or hiding it, trading
their phrase with their partner, and completing a “then” phrase. No matter how you play,
the idea is to generate surprising and audacious new language pairings that provoke
new thinking about what makes a thought or
an image whole. Next, Leah and I led a conversation on absence and presence through a
close reading of Juarroz’s poem in its entirety.
This was a remarkably nuanced conversation
and inspired a lot of wonderful original writing that riffed off the use of “conditionals” as a
poetic structure. Participants wrote individual
poems and then shared new writing to the
larger group. In preparing to create cyanotypes, we asked everyone to select their most
fascinating conditionals and to somehow use
those lines as inspiration for their cyanotypes.
When working with children, however, we
decided to use poetic text from the “conditionals” game as direct inspiration and did not
end up reading the Juarroz poem, or having
them write original individual works, due to
time and language constraints.
Once everyone selected their poetic phrases,
Leah led participants through the process of
designing and making cyanotypes. She began
by showing examples of the many different
ways in which the light and energy of the sun
can be used to create powerful photographic
HABLA BEST PRACTICE HANDBOOK 2010
images that highlight the absence and presence of objects.
Participants were invited to pair up or work
individually to connect their poetic text with
photographic image, using the cyanotype
process. When everyone’s work was finished,
we hung a line between two trees and
exhibited the work with a small, informal
reading and discussion about the process,
including ideas for extended learning. Similar
to the notion of a cordel, the images strung
together told the story of our collective effort
to explore absence and presence, fragments
and wholes, to create a beautiful collaborative work.
Procedure
1 SURREALIST CONDITIONALS
Get into pairs and assign a Person A and a
Person B. Person A thinks of an “if/si or when/
cuando” statement.
Ex: If a bird chirps or When a child fails
Person A does NOT tell Person B – they either
think it or jot it down…meanwhile…Person
B thinks of a “then/entonces” statement.
Ex: then all the leaves will fall or
then I’ll have to wash the spoons.
There are many variations on this exercise
– and when working with children, it also
works well if each child comes up with an “if/
when” phrase on a sheet of paper. Each child
also comes up with a “then” phrase. The children make two piles on the floor and then
are invited to select one phrase from each
pile to create surprising new phrases.
Person B does NOT tell Person A yet – they
either think it or jot it down. When both
Person A and Person B are ready – meaning
they each have their secret phrase, they give
each other a nod to reveal the conditional
statement as a whole:
If a bird chirps
Then all the leaves will fall.
When a child fails,
Then I’ll have to wash the spoons.
The joy is in the audaciousness of surprising
and unexpected connections. It’s fun for
Person A and Person B to jot down the whole
phrase before moving on to a next partner.
In the style of a salon, each person quickly
finds a new partner, quickly decides who will
think of an “if/when” and who will then of a
“then” and begin again.
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That’s just one possibility out of many to
make this exercise more hands on and interactive. You could also make a visible wall
of “if/when” and “then” phrases and have
students mix and match the phrases in pairs.
The emphasis should be on the joy of outrageous pairings – constructing new meanings
and images – and delighting in the results.
2 READ THE JUARROZ POEM & WRITE A
POEM WITH CONDITIONALS
In our workshop with educators, Leah and I
led an intensive study on the poem in which
the line “everything is fleeing toward its presence” appears.
The bell is full of wind
Though it does not ring.
The bird is full of flight
Though it is still.
The sky is full of clouds
Though it is alone.
The word is full of voice
Though no one speaks it.
Everything is full of fleeing
Though there are no roads.
Everything is fleeing
Toward its presence.
Exercise to frame the discussion:
Unpacking the Line: Choose a line and
“unpack” each word by creating associations,
memories, questions for each word in the line.
Discussion Questions:
• Which line(s) take your attention?
• Which line(s) speak to you most strongly?
• Which line confuses you?
• What does this poem say to you about
presence?
• Which line is the strongest visual image for
you?
• Which concept do you relate to the most?
• What is the meaning of the word “fleeing”
here – is it different in Spanish?
• What is the pattern of this poem?
• What can this poem teach us
about “presence”?
• When have you felt “fully present” or “fleeing
toward” presence
If the bird chirps,
Then all the leaves will fall.
And if all the leaves will fall,
Then snow will sing a song.
If snow sings a song,
The winter birds will shiver.
If winter birds shiver,
I' ll know you're coming home.
Possible PoetryExercises
to Follow Dialogue:
Speak to the Line: Select a line from the
poem and turn it into a question to be answered in the form of another poem as response.
Conditionals in a Round: Choose a conditional from our warm up exercise and create a
circular pattern with it, in which the last line of
one couplet becomes the first line of the next
couplet.
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Personal Conditionals: Think of ideas that
emerged from the dialogue on the poem. Write a free verse poem in which the one major
rule is to include a conditional form/moment
within it. You can riff off ideas about fullness/
emptiness/being/presence/ wholeness/emptiness, or other ideas that emerged for you in
the discussion.
3 SHARE & SELECT YOUR
FAVORITE TEXT
After writing and editing your work, come
back together as writers and read your work
out loud, commenting on strong imagery,
powerful turning points, interesting soundphrases, plays on language, etc. Select one
or two lines that hold the most meaning or
power for you.
This can be a line from your newest poem or
a conditionals phrase that you really like and
want to work with for our next stage in the
to the sun with our minds.
CREATING TRANSPRENCIES
AND THE CYANOTYPE PROCESS
LIST OF MATERIALS NEEDED
a. Transparencies 8x10 inches can be
purchased at any office supply store.
b. Black Sharpies
c. Pre-coated Cyanotype material from
Freestyle Photography
d. Glass piece to cover the size of your
transparency (8x10 inches)
e. Water to rinse you exposed material.
f. Cloth pins to hang your material to dry.
Take your favorite lines from the poetry conditionals; write the lines/ words/text on the
transparency with a black sharpie. Visually
respond to the text by drawing images on the
transparency. Freehand and/or tracing from
books and magazines is a great way to incorporate drawing. You can also ask your participants to gather objects from the natural world
or their surroundings (leaves, grass, flowers),
which are then placed on top of the transparency and the coated material, leaving just the
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shape/silhouette of the object. The Cyanotypes process is a photographic printing
process that utilizes UV light to create an
image that is cyan/blue in color. The process
was invented by Sir John Hershel in 1842 and
is made up of ammonium ferric citrate and
potassium ferricyanide and is nontoxic.
Making your print
Place transparency/objects on top of the
pre-coated material and then place a piece of
glass on top to place in the sun. Exposure time
varies from 5 minutes to 20 depending on
the strength of the sun and the time of year.
If working in Mérida where the sun is particularly strong, time will vary between 5 and 10
minutes. When the print has been exposed,
process your print by rinsing it in cold water.
The wash also removes any unexposed chemicals. Wash for at least 5 minutes, until all chemicals are removed and the water runs clear.
Oxidation is also hastened this way - bringing
out the blue color. The final print can now be
hung to dry and admired.
Your work area
The chemicals can stain walls, floors, carpets,
work surfaces, clothes and skin. Cover all possible areas, use rubber gloves and an apron or
an old shirt. If you have the space, choose an
area where you can spread out. Ordinary light
bulbs or tungsten light is safe to use, but UV
light will affect your prints. Some fluorescent
lighting may also affect yor prints.
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5. EXHIBITION & READING
After all the cyanotype squares are washed out,
hang each cloth on the laundry line in a courtyard
or other visible, public space. Gather all the artists
around the line and share out lines, phrases, or
whole poems. Comment on the piece as a whole
–what stands out, what surprised you,what questions does this raise, and what are some opportunities for extended learning.
Habla is an educational center and lab school based in Mérida, Yucatán, México,
dedicated to fostering school environments that promote the success of all
students from multiple cultural backgrounds. For teachers, artists, and school
leaders, Habla offers: cultural and language experiences, teacher institutes,
and an annual international educational forum.
www.habla.org.
HABLA BEST PRACTICE HANDBOOK 2010