
Remora – Jarrett Ziemer
Jarrett Ziemer’s project for the 2024 Jack Straw Writers Program is a multimedia project, a collection of poems paired with short films where he uses personification and the conflation of identities to tell introspective stories. In his conversation with curator Nisi Shawl, they delve into how he first became aware of his use of personification in his writing, the importance of recording live readings, and how he was inspired to pair poetry with short film. “I mean as artists, we get to this point in our life where we almost have to be declarative. Like this is what I’m going to do. I’m going to be a poet. I’m going to be a fiction writer. But I very recently am deciding like, ugh, I just want to do it all. And how can these things work together to help tell the story that I’m trying to tell? You know, maybe help the reader see the poem, feel the poem in a different way.”
Music by EarthtoneSkytone, produced in part through the Jack Straw Artist Support Program.