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Fall 2010 |

I Take Back the Sponge Cake

By Sierra Nelson and Loren Erdrich

TO USE THIS BOOK:

Read each poem and image. Then choose one word from the given pair, using the provided sentence as a guide. Link to the indicated page. Continue the adventure. If you become lost, or would like to return somewhere that you have already been, please return to this page.

Page 3       Page 7       Page 9       Page 15       Page 17       Page 46

 

The Kenyon Review is proud to present selections from I Take Back the Sponge Cake: A Lyrical Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book combining drawings and poems by Invisible Seeing Machine, the collaboration of Sierra Nelson and Loren Erdrich. Winner of the NYU Washington Square Review Prize for Collaboration 2010, the book appeared in Spring 2012 from Rose Metal Press.

The Book:

Loren Erdrich and Sierra Nelson met while working at the Vermont Studio Center during one-year artist-staff residencies. All of the drawings (primarily ink and watercolor) are by Loren, some of the poems are written solely by Sierra, and some of the poems were written collaboratively by both specifically for this project. Each drawing and poem comes with a choice between two sound-alike words, with strange and lovely definitions borrowed from a 1900’s spelling book. The pairing of the images in conversation with the poems and the mapping of the book’s meandering structure was a collaborative process as well.

More Sponge Cake:

To view more pages from I Take Back the Sponge Cake on the Web site Poemeleon please click here.

Sierra Nelson’s poems have appeared in journals such as Poetry Northwest, Forklift Ohio, Diagram, and Mare Nostrum, as well as on a Seattle Metro bus placard. As co-founder of the collaborative teams The Typing Explosion and the Vis-à-Vis Society, she has written and performed nationally and internationally. Nelson lives in Seattle.

Loren Erdrich is a visual artist working in drawing, sculpture, performance, and video. She received her MFA from the Burren College of Art and the National University of Ireland. She has exhibited across the United States and internationally, both individually and as part of the CultureLab Collective and GalleryELL, Brooklyn. Loren currently lives and works in New York City. Please see more of her work at www.okloren.com.
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