As winter turned into spring at the FEELed Lab, we felt the urge to get crafty! Thinking about upcoming events (the field trip to the Tar Sands in April and Water + Fire in June), we wanted to be able to gift our guests, hosts, and others who had offered us their time and knowledge something that was handmade and reflected our FEELed Lab ethos.
Dani and Rebecca M headed to the thrift store, and Astrida and Krusa did some design work. Then, we invited folx to come around to help us make things!
That takes care of the “craft” part – but what about the “strophe”? Some of you poetry nerds might know that “strophe” is another word for a group of lines in a lyric poem. Crafting + strophe = a chance to do things with our hands, while reading or thinking about poetry. Given FEELed Lab Visiting Researcher Rebecca Macklin’s interest in extraction poetics, our first craft-a-strophe session in April featured a number of poems chosen by Rebecca, to open up space to think about what lives and dies in the shadow of extraction, together (which was also a good primer for our upcoming Tar Sands field trip). Numerous friends of the FEELed Lab joined us to make silk screen patches, t-shirts, hats, and cyanotype cards as well.
(Where do these inks come from? What chemicals are used to the develop these colours? What labours when into making these fabrics and papers? It is hard not to think about these questions as we read Jeannette Armstrong’s “Three Line Poem” or Warren Cariou’s “Tar Hands: A Messy Manifesto”: “How do you point out that everyone’s hands are dirty? By making more mess.”)
Getting ready for Water + Fire, we had a second session down at the Lab in May to sew some tote bags and make a few more patches, and once again on campus in June, in collaboration with the AMP Lab to make buttons (or badges, as some call them). Buttons are so fun to wear and to gift to people! (What hands have put these pieces together, as they hurtle down an assembly line in a country that is not this one? More questions.) Craft-a-strophe, after all, is not just about crafting and poetry; it also happens in the context of multiple intersecting crises.
Big thanks to Briar, Shauna and Joanne at FCCS for their silkscreen expertise and documentation skills. Making and doing is part of what we do; thinking with our hands makes space for new thoughts. Look out for more craft-a-strophe sessions in the 2023/24 year!
The FEELed lab 