In an Irish sonnet stroke of the house paint you abandoned he stands in steady salute to the worship of the taste of modern musicality. He’s going to pour vodka on that paint to give it a fever of a dripping dreams as Sonic Youth defines it in guitar licks and throaty whispers. In his studio electric pinks, blood reds, runaway blues, and field green are the inheritance of sound he has fallen in love with on that day. Jack runs rampant in his own cosmos of painting. He's graciously given worship to the masters of before however he's living in the stars that are racing him to dreams that befall the night in washes swathed in colour that are a pulse. Words by Brit Parks.
There is a glass case. There is a glass heart. There is glass breath. There is Greta Bellamacina. I just found the receipt in my wallet from Paris Deyrolle where I bought an antique butterfly. I was in Paris to see Greta. This is significant as I crossed an ocean to see her. It is significant as those butterflies were in long cases not even trying to admit their beguiled history. Written by Brit Parks.
A minimal concept is an illusion of cement. It engages with silent forms that refuse a dialogue with silent lines of a coast, of rocks, of a neck. The will of minimalism is a kind of game to its master perhaps. As Antonioni set out to sea to film L'Avventura he had a lover, a script of half thoughts, a few thought out shakings, and a boat. Written by Brit Parks.
The poetics of form haunt lines. We cannot escape a line. It is the definition, the boundary, the limit. We try mercilessly to blur it to a soft space of lack. A photograph is willing to take a chemical bath and get lost for you. Absent heavy thoughts can be suspended in a permanent form. Written by Brit Parks.
With would be grace in disguise Robert Montogomery is burning language as art on the very soil it has been burned for wars, for crimes of men, for crimes of women. None of them valid, arguably. You could see his fire as vindication, a dedication, a silent sorrow. There is a drive in the act of poetics that is veritably difficult to define as language deciphering language is like having your tongue tied twice. Written by Brit Parks.
I don’t mind you acting like David Bowie. We all need a gig. I don’t care if you echo lines that went extinct with the Medicis. They may have been scarce on mirrors, but my God they spent a lot of time staring at their own image. Do we hate mirrors but feel like we are drowning without them. Is black pigment a couleur. I feel like people deserve to have a non-couleur. Written by Brit Parks.
Brit Parks is an American poet, artist, and scholar living between Europe and The States. She engages her writing, poetry, and art poetics as a study of language itself whilst discussing abstracts of ephemerality, materialism, and vulnerable myths. GLASS LIMBS, her full-length poetry book, was released in 2021. Her forthcoming book, STONE AMNESIA, will feature a collection of poetry and art poetics. Among others, she has read her poetry at Shakespeare and Company Paris in 2019 and Café Central in Menorca, Spain in 2023. An ardent scholar of Colour Pigment History, Rare Books, Archeology, and Art Theory, Parks received her Master of Fine Arts in Writing and Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she was a recipient of the Edes Fellowship for Emerging Artists.
Say Lou Lou wrote an Odyssey, the Odyssey wrote them. They beset minor chisel crimes of jawlines skies envy. They are asking Hermes' ghost why mouthes gape wide if only their teeth are listening. You could wax Vanessa Beecroft pasquinade cords strewn black heels. Exile is not a foreign tongue, that would mean our tongues are in a wet hedge maze. Written by Brit Parks.
In the silent cinema of cause Greta Bellamacina is taking stock. A leg's length of spirit spills from her lips to paper's ears. From her mind delving in piles of too much, heatherred in too often, she is memorizing the shape of silence. She is straying from an unknown to a deep well of dance fittings steeped in formal chaos. Bellamacina donates a script written in sand tears, a wavering glow of madness, and a slinking hope filled mouth. Written by Brit Parks.
I have stolen language and ground it down with my teeth. I have warped it for the purpose of my own devised myths. I consider poetry a visual space conceptually and on the written page. I am consumed with ideas of captivity and freedom. I am concerned with how they are taken and given. Lost and won. For me, language is a medium for the ether, we are trying to huff in like air. Written by Brit Parks.
POETICA SALVET MUNDUM translates as ‘Poetry Saves the World.’ -ROBERT MONTGOMERY
Harley Cortez is blushing truant composition. As if John Cage pinned-in piano strings to echo the sonancy of his throaty heart. Merce Cunningham loaned his hollow taut-form to collect the trappings of static. Written by Brit Parks.
Perfumery is a structure created with a version of beautiful madness we will never escape, shall it be stale aired stone or an exotic rare French rose falling through scented notes of old cigarettes burned feverishly while trying to make our escape to a constructed dream.
Botanist bred two roses together to yield a sturdier bloom that lasted longer and held its scent. Sofia Fanego is a scientist of the heart employing collage as her medium. She synthesizes dried fleurs with images taken on her analogue camera or a dig through ancient global books. Her depths are set by impulse and emotive connections. Written by Brit Parks.
Clay in tin powder gray. Clay harvested as it is part of the earth. One could rely on this to begin a scholarly conversation about sculpture in classical terms. There is no need to be classical with Poppy Field as she is entirely complex and modern. Written by Brit Parks.
Brit Parks is an American poet, artist, and scholar living between Europe and The States. She engages her writing, poetry, and art poetics as a study of language itself whilst discussing abstracts of ephemerality, materialism, and vulnerable myths. GLASS LIMBS, her full-length poetry book, was released in 2021. Her forthcoming book, STONE AMNESIA, will feature a collection of poetry and art poetics. Among others, she has read her poetry at Shakespeare and Company Paris in 2019 and Café Central in Menorca, Spain in 2023. An ardent scholar of Colour Pigment History, Rare Books, Archeology, and Art Theory, Parks received her Master of Fine Arts in Writing and Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she was a recipient of the Edes Fellowship for Emerging Artists.
I was an ice cube necklace when I called you. I was dripping off the ledge of larks. There is a belief I have that one must try to be surprised, that one must long for it. I search like a junkie for poetics in life. Like an archeologist does bones. Never willing to close all of my eyes, I stay half awake in the dark waiting it out. Written by Brit Parks.
Scarlett Sabet is here to freeze your mouth. Vesuvius’s temper froze a civilization in hours. Scarlett knows the myth of temperament, she can coax a line from a delicate silence. Her poetics are steeped in a kind of cadence born of sympathy and measured observation. Catalyst is a collaborative record with Jimmy Page. Written by Brit Parks.
Faye Wei Wei takes her sly delicate hand to a deer with blue slit eyes that are magnetic but not the version that displays on a screen. She has constructed a ceremonial code on her own terms. Written by Brit Parks.
Alexa Chung cannot be pinned down with a quick conclusion. She has singular beauty closely chased with a wit to make lilac fields sway electric. She has evolved throughout her career with a quiet grace that strikes a sharp note as she commands the post as designer of her own eponymous Ready-to-wear label. Written by Brit Parks.
Naomi Scott has the distinct quality of a Roman coin, her raw intelligence flashing to a polished work ethic at an angle. Her acting is adeptly encompassing, the same way Catherine Deneuve saturates the screen in my favorite psychological masterpiece Repulsion by Roman Polanski. Both actresses' sheer range of emotion bewilders and leaves you feeling stripped. The architecture of the damned glossed up by a sacred history of heroines comes hysteria.
Brit Parks is an American poet, artist, and scholar living between Europe and The States. She engages her writing, poetry, and art poetics as a study of language itself whilst discussing abstracts of ephemerality, materialism, and vulnerable myths. GLASS LIMBS, her full-length poetry book, was released in 2021. Her forthcoming book, STONE AMNESIA, will feature a collection of poetry and art poetics. Among others, she has read her poetry at Shakespeare and Company Paris in 2019 and Café Central in Menorca, Spain in 2023. An ardent scholar of Colour Pigment History, Rare Books, Archeology, and Art Theory, Parks received her Master of Fine Arts in Writing and Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she was a recipient of the Edes Fellowship for Emerging Artists.
An avant-enfleurage, as this molting includes the aeration, the distillation, the fume, the heir-haunt of scent. Setting the air ablaze in profound strokes whilst sitting next to air that was huffed without intention. Eugène Atget’s camera sucked in the ancient dust hung with fresh vegetation and lay it with precision chemical gush- es on to glass negatives. Written by Brit Parks.
“There doesn’t seem to be anything quite comparable in the poetry world,” Greta Bellamacina says when discussing SMEAR. “I didn’t feel there was a comfortable place for young women in their teens and early twenties to voice their thoughts, their politics, their emotions through poetry. Features poems by Brit Parks.
"Brit's work is a music of regret. What I see in it is a special kind of Generation X melancholy, but pulled through centuries of European culture, with the ghosts of Baroque music and Symbolist painting in it— an American parking lot seen through the veil of a Puvuis de Chavannes painting, and tears. She is absolutely my favourite American poet of now."
Robert Montgomery
Brit Parks is an American poet, artist, and scholar living between Europe and The States. She engages her writing, poetry, and art poetics as a study of language itself whilst discussing abstracts of ephemerality, materialism, and vulnerable myths. GLASS LIMBS, her full-length poetry book, was released in 2021. Her forthcoming book, STONE AMNESIA, will feature a collection of poetry and art poetics. Among others, she has read her poetry at Shakespeare and Company Paris in 2019 and Café Central in Menorca, Spain in 2023. An ardent scholar of Colour Pigment History, Rare Books, Archeology, and Art Theory, Parks received her Master of Fine Arts in Writing and Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she was a recipient of the Edes Fellowship for Emerging Artists.
Botanists bred two roses together to yield a sturdier bloom that lasted longer and held its scent emulating the fixedness of eternity. Sofia Fanego is a scientist of the heart employing collage and blooms as her material. She synthesizes dried fleurs with female images taken on her analogue camera or found in a dig through ancient global books.
Brit Parks is an American poet, artist, and scholar living between Europe and The States. She engages her writing, poetry, and art poetics as a study of language itself whilst discussing abstracts of ephemerality, materialism, and vulnerable myths. GLASS LIMBS, her full-length poetry book, was released in 2021. Her forthcoming book, STONE AMNESIA, will feature a collection of poetry and art poetics. Among others, she has read her poetry at Shakespeare and Company Paris in 2019 and Café Central in Menorca, Spain in 2023. An ardent scholar of Colour Pigment History, Rare Books, Archeology, and Art Theory, Parks received her Master of Fine Arts in Writing and Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she was a recipient of the Edes Fellowship for Emerging Artists.
Brit Parks is an American poet, artist, and scholar living between Europe and The States. She engages her writing, poetry, and art poetics as a study of language itself whilst discussing abstracts of ephemerality, materialism, and vulnerable myths. GLASS LIMBS, her full-length poetry book, was released in 2021. Her forthcoming book, STONE AMNESIA, will feature a collection of poetry and art poetics. Among others, she has read her poetry at Shakespeare and Company Paris in 2019 and Café Central in Menorca, Spain in 2023. An ardent scholar of Colour Pigment History, Rare Books, Archeology, and Art Theory, Parks received her Master of Fine Arts in Writing and Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she was a recipient of the Edes Fellowship for Emerging Artists.
Barbican is set to stage Modern Couples: Art, Intimacy and the Avant-garde, continued from its conception at Centre Pompidou, and it’s perhaps entirely the place to start. This is an exhibition that ultimately documents partnerships in art beyond the concept of the romantic couple, especially in France. Written by Brit Parks.
A doubling of missing. A void is a fact verified by a heart asking questions. Jenna Putnam is known for her visceral vision in every medium she touches, I envision the film responds to her highly precise eye that can measure the silence of pain by showing us the forms it takes. Her film AGATHE stars the star of her story, a lithe French girl who weeps as close to the camera as is possible to keep her in frame. Written by Brit Parks.
That elusive creature I try to never call by name out loud. Creativity. There is not a prescriptive process, method, must have supply. There is also no calculation, I find myself gushing out Jimi Hendrix is the best guitarist that ever lived and I will fight on that one. Written by Brit Parks.
Lamp black half-words sunken with deep hefty croons. Orville Peck is an enigma by design. Lyrics ring out as poetic lamentations startled by gritty unapologetic truths, yet kind. His first album, PONY, was released on SUB POP. Written by Brit Parks.
Robert Montgomery’s work has lived in the untranslatable spaces, intentionally misplaced spaces. Words as medium, poetics as pyre, and forms that suggest liberation. His work in a fraction of seconds is a record of fragile tomorrows huffing on forgiven landscapes. Written by Brit Parks.
Brit Parks is an American poet, artist, and scholar living between Europe and The States. She engages her writing, poetry, and art poetics as a study of language itself whilst discussing abstracts of ephemerality, materialism, and vulnerable myths. GLASS LIMBS, her full-length poetry book, was released in 2021. Her forthcoming book, STONE AMNESIA, will feature a collection of poetry and art poetics. Among others, she has read her poetry at Shakespeare and Company Paris in 2019 and Café Central in Menorca, Spain in 2023. An ardent scholar of Colour Pigment History, Rare Books, Archeology, and Art Theory, Parks received her Master of Fine Arts in Writing and Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she was a recipient of the Edes Fellowship for Emerging Artists.
Prehistoric white geology is the carefore of seagrass. You can slip like the devil on the sea’s informant. You can also use it as code. This will be the glossy slip second your mind will forcefully exile to survival. Your limbs will drink salt like they miss their Mother. Your eyes will drink salt like the aprés they never needed. Written by Brit Parks.
Not so much an anthology as a snapshot of a moment in history as seen from an array of emotional perspectives, the second New River Press “Yearbook” is an undisciplined and eclectic collection with its ear to the ground and eyes to the sky. Poetry expresses what we feel our place in the world is, and how we imagine that place can change. It draws attention to some sense or essence that refuses to be fully apprehended by language. These poems hint at the state of the sublime in a time of impending catastrophe. This yearbook is far reaching. Bigger and bolder than the first New River Press yearbook including new work by just over 200 poets, from established names such as Vahni Capildeo, Hugo Williams, Michael Horowitz, Jeremy Reed, and Greta Bellamacina to new poets who are being published for the first time in these pages. Andre Breton’s description of poetry, most of all, speaks to the hope of this collection: DREAMING WITH YOUR EYES OPEN. Let this collection open your eyes to hundreds of waking dreams.
Porcelain chipped hearts beating their own little lives. With the gold of gods for tiny precious claws, horns, vessels, veins, and spikes. This is the heart you know but the heart you have never seen. Juli About lives in a dreamscape two hours outside of Paris with flowering trees and an atelier, spending endless hours creating object d'art that blaze a new breed of surreal. Written by Brit Parks.
Poetry curation by Brit Parks for Unpolished Magazine, BOOK 10, The Sound of Silence. Work by Lukas Frank, Ilyas Kassam, Njabulon.
Brit Parks is an American poet, artist, and scholar living between Europe and The States. She engages her writing, poetry, and art poetics as a study of language itself whilst discussing abstracts of ephemerality, materialism, and vulnerable myths. GLASS LIMBS, her full-length poetry book, was released in 2021. Her forthcoming book, STONE AMNESIA, will feature a collection of poetry and art poetics. Among others, she has read her poetry at Shakespeare and Company Paris in 2019 and Café Central in Menorca, Spain in 2023. An ardent scholar of Colour Pigment History, Rare Books, Archeology, and Art Theory, Parks received her Master of Fine Arts in Writing and Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she was a recipient of the Edes Fellowship for Emerging Artists.
Poetry curation by Brit Parks for Unpolished Magazine, BOOK 13. Work by Orion Carlota.
Poetry curation by Brit Parks for Unpolished Magazine, BOOK 9 and BOOK 11. Work by Parker Love Bowling, Tess Parks, Medina Pop, Dua Al Bostani Al Fattohi, Zoë Skyler Pattison, and Michelle Freya.
Brit Parks is an American poet, artist, and scholar living between Europe and The States. She engages her writing, poetry, and art poetics as a study of language itself whilst discussing abstracts of ephemerality, materialism, and vulnerable myths. GLASS LIMBS, her full-length poetry book, was released in 2021. Her forthcoming book, STONE AMNESIA, will feature a collection of poetry and art poetics. Among others, she has read her poetry at Shakespeare and Company Paris in 2019 and Café Central in Menorca, Spain in 2023. An ardent scholar of Colour Pigment History, Rare Books, Archeology, and Art Theory, Parks received her Master of Fine Arts in Writing and Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she was a recipient of the Edes Fellowship for Emerging Artists.
Brit Parks is an American poet, artist, and scholar living between Europe and The States. She engages her writing, poetry, and art poetics as a study of language itself whilst discussing abstracts of ephemerality, materialism, and vulnerable myths. GLASS LIMBS, her full-length poetry book, was released in 2021. Her forthcoming book, STONE AMNESIA, will feature a collection of poetry and art poetics. Among others, she has read her poetry at Shakespeare and Company Paris in 2019 and Café Central in Menorca, Spain in 2023. An ardent scholar of Colour Pigment History, Rare Books, Archeology, and Art Theory, Parks received her Master of Fine Arts in Writing and Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she was a recipient of the Edes Fellowship for Emerging Artists.
My Father was a boxer. He taught me how to box when I was nine. This commonality, and the need to impress him, informed a great deal. When Charles Bukowski at an event asked me to ‘take it outside’ over a girl, I said okay. I was 21 and shy. Everyone at the party kept telling him not to ‘go outside with this kid’ because I knew how to box. His face truly looked like it had been run over by a truck. We went outside and I thought it could get really messy. I said, how about we share a drink instead. Written by Brit Parks.
