Annelyse Gelman’s recent work explores social and ecological precarity—or, more fundamentally, vulnerability—through poetic studies of nonhuman intelligence, embodied cognition, and the limits of empathy. She is particularly fascinated with the potential for cross-species or machine-human collaboration, and the ways in which a technological apparatus can serve as an extension of our capacities for thinking and feeling. She recently completed, with the help of a programmer, a working model of a new word processing application called Midst that is capable of capturing poets’ writing process as it occurs. At Fondation Thalie, she’ll be working on a project involving an epic poem, The Botanic Garden, published by Erasmus Darwin (Charles Darwin’s grandfather) in 1791, about plant intelligence. Employing Midst, she’ll also capture her working process as she progresses, allowing her to demonstrate the fundamentally time-based nature of poetry and literary art.
Annelyse Gelman, born in 1991 in Berkeley (United States) is a writer and poet, currently based in Portland, Oregon. Her language-based projects revolve around intimacy and vulnerability, drawing on several disciplines at once and incorporating aspects of publishing, installation, and performance. Annelyse Gelman’s work has appeared in The New Yorker, BOMB Magazine, the PEN Poetry Series, American Poetry Review, and elsewhere, and she is the author of the poetry collection Everyone I Love Is a Stranger to Someone (2014, Write Bloody), the artist’s book POOL (2020, NECK Press), and the EP About Repulsion (2019, Fonograf Editions). Gelman has been the recipient of fellowships and residencies from the Deutsch-Amerikanische Fulbright-Kommission, New Zealand Pacific Studio, Fondation Jan Michalski, and the Michener Center for Writers.
Joël Riff, guest curator for the 2021 residency will be guiding laureates over the course of working sessions.