"Fogo"

• Main Author: Wilson, Anna Elizabeth
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: LSU Digital Commons 2015
• Subjects: fine arts; Newfoundland; Fogo; poetry; Creative Writing
• Online Access: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_theses/3839; https://doi.org/10.31390/gradschool_theses.3839

Titled “FOGO,” after the island of Fogo, Newfoundland, this collection speaks from the intersection of location, visitation, and residency. Fogo has drawn considerable attention for the artist residency program begun in 2010 by a native islander in an effort to revitalize the local communities. The titular island manifests the mystique of place as persona, person as place, and each poem is framed, ostensibly, in the voice of a male artist working in a different medium in residence on Fogo. While this project plays in persona, “FOGO” also interrogates narrative—each persona begins to tell a story or stories. Narrative arcs begin, or are entered at some point along a spectrum, but remain fragmentary. Slippage between the personas causes the narrative fragments to overlap, conflate and diverge. The text as a whole asks the reader to contemplate whether the fragments come together to create a coherent whole, and suggests that the reader will bring their own storytelling into the act of reading to ‘fill in the gaps.’ “FOGO” further represents ongoing exploration of interdisciplinarity. The heavy research undertaken to capture the special vocabularies of more than forty “types” of artist made it natural to adopt the abecedarian form. The volume comprises a disordered alphabet, a small encyclopedia of art and intimacy spoken by strangers in a strange land.