"Intimate Distances: Trans-space Communication in Hannah Weiner’s Signal Flag Poems"

Kristin Emanuel, PhD student in English & Comparative Literature in Arts & Sciences, discusses a selection of mixed-media poems by Hannah Weiner in the Kemper Art Museum’s collection. Weiner’s Signal Flag Poems blend visual composition with International Code, transcribing semaphore flags and morse signals. In this talk, Emanuel considers what happens when systems like the International Code of Signals are repurposed for intimate human exchanges. She explores Weiner’s aspirational and prescient approach to trans-space communication, one which blurs image with text, paper with performance. Through Hannah Weiner’s work, Emanuel asserts the intrinsically visual nature of poetry, imagining a poetics of translation that reaches across disciplines and distances.

Free and open to the public.