CAConrad & Anna Mendelssohn: the poem that could not wait

An exhibition of poetry by CAConrad and Anna Mendelssohn reproduced in a sculptural installation at CAConrad's trademark larger-than-human sizes. About Since her death in 2009, Mendelssohn’s work has gained interest in publication and exhibition contexts. CAConrad has spent time amongst the hundreds of boxes and files in the University of Sussex’s archives that store Mendelssohn’s distinctive drawn and handwritten manuscripts, and has worked with curator Iain Morrison to select nine poems by Mendelssohn that resonate with their own. The exhibition will present these previously unpublished poems alongside nine of CAConrad’s poems. Both poets’ work is reproduced in a sculptural installation at CAConrad’s trademark larger-than-human sizes. Mendelssohn’s manuscripts yield densely concentrated blocks of text and drawing, and in the exhibition her fascinating range of handwriting and drawing is retained, with the shift to larger scales allowing audiences to see her work in detail and up close. The exhibition follows Speak, Poetess (Whitechapel Gallery, London, 2023) in finding interest in what that exhibition’s curator Eugene Yiu Nam Cheung called ‘the ways [Mendelssohn’s] poetry and art communicate with each other’. the poem that could not wait further reveals the relationship in Mendelssohn’s work between the handwritten and the drawn. CAConrad brings to Mendelssohn’s work the insights of another poet who cares deeply about the shaping of their poems. From 2005 they have rejected left-aligned text. Their fellowship with Mendelssohn as a poet writing against oppression is underscored by their telling us that this change was brought about when they heard a voice on the edge of waking tell them, ‘You have too many straight lines in your human world. We want to show you the way out of the violence of the line.’ Both poets speak in arresting language that juxtaposes personal, environmental, and global political realities. Bringing their work together in the same space offers viewers the experience of reading and thinking between what these poems tell us as they speak into our own disordered times. Read more Toggle Sculpture Installation