Mobile Photography & Art Saturday Poetry – ‘Instrument’ by Dao Strom with Sarah Bichachi
This weeks Saturday Poetry, matched with mobile photography/art is entitled ‘Instrument’. “I wrote this poem at the end of 2016. In the wake of the election, the phrase ‘burning-est woken of time’ spoke to a sense of urgency and self-questioning as to what kind of ‘instrument’ I would wish to be, and how. I remember there were a lot of words in the air at the time, rhetoric zinging back and forth on how to fight, resist, right and wrong ways to be, etc.—and maybe in response a part of me was craving a quieter version of myself, to be a conduit and hold channels open without falling prey to (or simply reflecting back) the anxieties around me/us. Playing with ‘-ist’ and ‘-est,’ and the placement of stanzas were further ways for me to contemplate sound and the extremities of language, as well as the slippery ease with which we create hierarchies of meaning by how we configure words” explained Dao Strom.
Dao Strom is the author of several books, including the bilingual poetry/art book, You Will Always Be Someone From Somewhere Else, (AJAR Press, 2018) and a hybrid-form memoir We Were Meant To Be a Gentle People, accompanied by a song-cycle, East/West (Press Otherwise, 2015). She is the editor of diaCRITICS and lives in Portland, Oregon.
I have matched this image entitled ‘Chocolate Tears’ by Sarah Bichachi – @sarahbichachi with this poem.
You can view and follow her work on Instagram here.
If you would like to be featured in our Saturday Poetry section, please ensure you include the hashtag #theappwhisperer to any images posted to Instagram. This will mean we will be able to consider it.
To view the others we have published in this section, go here.
i have wanted to be a sieve
i have wanted to be an anechoic chamber
and reflect back to you no sound
but for the quiet rush and thrum
of your own nervous blood
i have wanted to be instrument
and not just body to be felt
the cleavage of the world through
but instead to splay the invisible
light waned out through skin
skin and rushes
a bird-wing desire
alight and under {fire}
{i} walked out into the burning-est
woken / of time / am i / acting-vist
enough / as light / in the interim
/ inner of darkness / now entering
/ the machine / in knowing of
cloak & insidious /
of wonder / & plunder /
not to seek / satisfaction in peaks
/ & difficult in climb
/ & / into surrender’s don’ts //
{i} walked out
into the brilliant
wokenest of
time & everything
was trite-ist
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Joanne Carter
Joanne Carter, creator of the world’s most popular mobile photography and art website— TheAppWhisperer.com— TheAppWhisperer platform has been a pivotal cyberspace for mobile artists of all abilities to learn about, to explore, to celebrate and to share mobile artworks. Joanne’s compassion, inclusivity, and humility are hallmarks in all that she does, and is particularly evident in the platform she has built. In her words, “We all have the potential to remove ourselves from the centre of any circle and to expand a sphere of compassion outward; to include everyone interested in mobile art, ensuring every artist is within reach”, she has said. Promotion of mobile artists and the art form as a primary medium in today’s art world, has become her life’s focus. She has presented lectures bolstering mobile artists and their art from as far away as the Museum of Art in Seoul, South Korea to closer to her home in the UK at Focus on Imaging. Her experience as a jurist for mobile art competitions includes: Portugal, Canada, US, S Korea, UK and Italy. And her travels pioneering the breadth of mobile art includes key events in: Frankfurt, Naples, Amalfi Coast, Paris, Brazil, London. Pioneering the world’s first mobile art online gallery - TheAppWhispererPrintSales.com has extended her reach even further, shipping from London, UK to clients in the US, Europe and The Far East to a global group of collectors looking for exclusive art to hang in their homes and offices. The online gallery specialises in prints for discerning collectors of unique, previously unseen signed limited edition art. Her journey towards becoming The App Whisperer, includes (but is not limited to) working for a paparazzi photo agency for several years and as a deputy editor for a photo print magazine. Her own freelance photographic journalistic work is also widely acclaimed. She has been published extensively both within the UK and the US in national and international titles. These include The Times, The Sunday Times, The Guardian, Popular Photography & Imaging, dpreview, NikonPro, Which? and more recently with the BBC as a Contributor, Columnist at Vogue Italia and Contributing Editor at LensCulture. Her professional photography has also been widely exhibited throughout Europe, including Italy, Portugal and the UK. She is currently writing several books, all related to mobile art and is always open to requests for new commissions for either writing or photography projects or a combination of both. Please contact her at: [email protected]
