Nextness by Randee Silv
“Wordslabs are the concrete stepping stones that lead through the wild and open landscapes otherwise too unstable and overwhelming to traverse. They guide into many directions > wise > funny > absurd > essential > alarming, yet from where you are right now, there is surprisingly only one sure next step that will ground you in the chaos.”
Franziska Lamprecht, artist & writer
“Obsolete jottings caught by not captured” is one way of putting it, and the artist does so in “Disarray” which is the opening piece in Nextness. It is an invitation to trip through a precisely-curated exhibition of 82 visually formatted works of art with one word titles, resembling squares or rectangles on the page. A nod to concrete, perhaps, but also a connection to the artist’s visual art. Where the artist once paint-ed abstractions in oil, she now collages, photographs, frames and constructs with words that sometimes feel like scenes in a film. Like the art of Sophie Calle, Silv’s work is contemporary, cerebral, with an unexpected warmth.
Read the full review on Word For/Word →
The push and pull that holds tension taught, the lightness caught by the heavy hand that moves fluidly, the same and the different of what was and what will be, these are the things that cause the cracks that are created to overflow with infinite possibilities, possibilities that fill the work of Randee Silv and leave us in a state of wonderment. There is an excruciating beauty in the density of matter that soars beyond its meaning. Silv, in her latest book of wordslabs, Nextness, has achieved a wonderful and intriguing balance that transcends the realm of prose poetry with its painterly usage of form. She has achieved an equilibrium all of her own, somewhere between the writings of Fernando Pessoa and the paintings of Nicolas de Staël, which holds the audience tight while allowing them an outburst of emotional exploration that weaves wildly on a narrow road.
Read the full review in HEAVY FEATHER REVIEW →
“To begin with a paradox: a slab, an opaque thing of considerable mass and density, when made of words provides an opening through which we can catch a view of a unique sensibility moving through the world as the world moves through it. The sensibility is that of New York writer Randee Silv, and the slabs are the compact verbal objects she calls wordslabs. A wordslab is a kind of quasi-narrative, hybrid of prose and poetry that fits the condensed and mutable language and imagery of the latter into the regular periodic structures of the former. These sentences are gathered together into blocks—slabs–that Silv arranges on the page as if composing a painting out of masses of plastic forms. They are visual as well as verbal objects, intended to make an impression on the eye as well as the ear. But they are slabs as well because they seem to want to be read as units, as miniature quasi-narratives complete in themselves.” – musician & writer Daniel Barbiero
Readn the full review in OFF COURSE →
I _ _love __ these.
Wordslabs.
How perfect a description of them.They’re like being in concrete smoke,
like plummeting down a waterfall
or being in a swift moving stream
and swooshing around sudden rock outcroppings
until, suddenly, I’ve arrived at a complete stop
and am contemplating a vividly crafted last image
or assertion or observation
I didn’t see coming.
I feel provoked, satiated, and always,
caught by surprise at where I’ve ended up.I want to read page after page, but I can’t.
I don’t want to dilute the richness of any one of them
so I read a spread at a time,
but I can’t stop myself from returning
to the first line and rereading each multiple times.
I love how the chain of sentences
link to each other, how sometimes
they’re purely a language bath,
how sometimes I feel I was just told a story
in a language bath, but I always feel
like I’ve arrived somewhere
very far from where I began.Lisa Segal – poet & artist
Nextness – Randee Silv – Arteidolia Press 2023 →
Read an interview with Randee Silv on Cutbank: University of Montana →
Or you can contact Arteidolia Press
arteidolia[at]arteidolia.com
Nextness, 2023, ISBN: 978-1-7369983-8-0, 92 pages, $14
For a review copy or additional information contact Arteidolia Press.
arteidolia[at]arteidolia.com
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