For the month of October, videopoet Lina Ramona Vitkauskas revisits the idea of time as mosaic via heterotopic spaces—transient and transformative places we visit in our minds as well as physically / geographically / biologically / politically. The videopoem “Topography” is a collaboration with sound artist / poet / translator Khashayar Mohammadi and speaks to seeking an inner cartographer as we navigate our lived experiences, that is, mapping and finding the "lay of the land” of our life’s purpose and identity. Another view: what occurs when two poets who also speak in other mediums decide to collaborate? We draw an audio-visual map. We create our own topography—mountains and valleys from sounds. Rivers from words. A bi Lithuanian-Canadian-American and a queer, Iranian-born, Toronto-based poet, writer, and translator who both have a love for ancient Indo-European dialects bring their own A/V languages to the table. As the poem states: we arrange sequences of dialogues.
Poem:
TOPOGRAPHY
“He was one more incognito in the city of illustrious incognitos.”
—Bon Voyage, Mr. President, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The same substances—your bones.
Calcium or wood fibres.
Think protection, rockets,
or of safe people in the crowd,
grasping for dimension, in
simultaneous paralysis.
The market booms with traitors.
We flee our voices, our runny DNA flung
upon the street, watercolour without myth
or mystery.
Outside the wreck still curls into itself.
Lizards slide between bank doors.
Scaffolds of eyes, arranging sequences
of dialogues. We are not the first with selenite
slippers to kiss the compass.
We take the sugar pills,
receive a swift kick in the gut
from the algorithm. What tombs—
we herrings—in cages
blessed with lungs.
