I was reader now (E.D), 2015-2017
I was reader now (E.D), 2015-2017
<p>Final Harvest, Emily Dickinson’s Poems, Thomas H. Johnson (ed.), Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto, 1961.</p>

Final Harvest, Emily Dickinson’s Poems, Thomas H. Johnson (ed.), Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto, 1961.

<p>14 by Emily Dickinson (with selected articles), Thomas M Davis, Scott, Foresman Company, University of Missouri, 1964.</p>

14 by Emily Dickinson (with selected articles), Thomas M Davis, Scott, Foresman Company, University of Missouri, 1964.

<p>Selected Poems of Emily Dickinson, A.K.Conrad (Intro.) The Modern Library, New York, Random House, 1924. All poems reproduced with permission of Little, Brown and Company copyright 180, 1891, 1896)</p>

Selected Poems of Emily Dickinson, A.K.Conrad (Intro.) The Modern Library, New York, Random House, 1924. All poems reproduced with permission of Little, Brown and Company copyright 180, 1891, 1896)

<p>The Poems of Emily Dickinson, Vol. 2, Thomas H. Johnson (ed.), The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1955. [Poems 495-1176, 1861-1870.]</p>

The Poems of Emily Dickinson, Vol. 2, Thomas H. Johnson (ed.), The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1955. [Poems 495-1176, 1861-1870.]

<p>Final Harvest, Emily Dickinson’s Poems, Thomas H. Johnson (ed.), Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto, 1961.</p>

Final Harvest, Emily Dickinson’s Poems, Thomas H. Johnson (ed.), Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto, 1961.

<p>Final Harvest, Emily Dickinson’s Poems, Thomas H. Johnson (ed.), Little, Brown and Company (Canada) 1961. Second print.</p>

Final Harvest, Emily Dickinson’s Poems, Thomas H. Johnson (ed.), Little, Brown and Company (Canada) 1961. Second print.

<p>The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, Edited by Thomas H. Johnson, Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto, 1960?1, (all copyright 1890, 1891, 1896) sixth printing.</p>

The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, Edited by Thomas H. Johnson, Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto, 1960?1, (all copyright 1890, 1891, 1896) sixth printing.

<p>Final Harvest, Emily Dickinson’s Poems, Thomas H. Johnson (ed.), Little, Brown and Company (Canada) 1961.</p>

Final Harvest, Emily Dickinson’s Poems, Thomas H. Johnson (ed.), Little, Brown and Company (Canada) 1961.

<p>The Poems of Emily Dickinson, Volume II, ed. Thomas H. Johnson, Belknap University Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1955. Poems 1177 – 1775 (1870-1886 and undated poems)</p>

The Poems of Emily Dickinson, Volume II, ed. Thomas H. Johnson, Belknap University Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1955. Poems 1177 – 1775 (1870-1886 and undated poems)

<p>Unknown ref. I</p>

Unknown ref. I

<p>Unknown ref. II</p>

Unknown ref. II

<p>Unknown ref. III</p>

Unknown ref. III

I was reader now (E.D), 2015-2017. Graphite on trace paper, paper, ink, 11 pages, 27.9 x 21cm each
Annotations by readers of publications of poems by Emily Dickinson sourced from Australian public libraries

[Unhidden, 2017, Counihan Gallery Brunswick. VCA Art Space, 2018, Melbourne; The movement of the aside, Artspace, Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne, 2018]

Emily Dickinson wrote on scraps of paper, in an idiosyncratic notational style with her own system of punctuation. She later transcribed these noticings into good copy using ink. The papers were put into drawers but ungathered, unordered, unbound until late in her life when Dickinson stitched some papers together into fascicles. After the poet’s death, Dickinson’s sister and publisher selected the opus we know as the Collected Works – The Final Harvest.

Recording the intimate engagement of readers with Emily Dickinson’s text, the work transcribes and superimposes all readerly inscriptions from single volumes (sourced from holdings at the Lenton Parr Library, University of Melbourne and via interlibrary loans in Australia) into polyphonic, complex authored annotative drawings. Isolating readerly notations and dropping out the main text, the record of readers’ engagement remains, taking the form of mostly illegible, annotative drawings that shift the mode of address from a personal often solitary experience into something communal—a shared public fiction. This spatial imaginary com-position conflates or transposes two or more (many) spaces. It offers ways of holding different views and temporalities that extend the singular.

The work connects to memory and transcription; processes in which losses and divergences figure meaning. The looping, compositional movement and marked uncertainties in Emily Dickinsons’ handwritten drafts are also diagrammed in annotations made by readers. Circled words and underlined sections make felt connections between images or parts of the text that the reader has understood or feels the need to question. These marginal notes are a form of irretrievable indirection. Read by further readers they bring a tangle of meanings and multi-voiced quality to the text that opens it as an intersubjective and intertextual continuous, fluid form.

Made material on the printed page, they mark the movement of attention.