One advantage of the modern age is that good work travels fast; you may already have heard and seen “Women of Troy.” But if not, get thee to Transom and spend a few minutes. Then pass on the link. This remarkable slide show/poem/radio piece is part of In Verse, which arose from AIR’s Maker’s Quest. Transom’s feature is about the Making Of… and it includes commentary from all the collaborators—radio producer Lu Olkowski, editor Ted Genoways, poet Susan B.A. Somers-Willett, and photographer Brenda Ann Kenneally. And, we’re posting more work from this series… three powerful duets, made from poems and recordings of the people who inspired them. All airing on Studio 360 this weekend. Highly recommended.
Alright, I'm so excited that these pieces are finally available to the public. I'm jealous as hell of this project and very intrigued by the idea that poetry has an important role to play in the journalistic endeavor. I'm still digesting the pieces (The Flag Day leaves me speechless) and I have a lot I want to ask about, but if I may, a question for Susan and a question for Lu:
Susan: What is it like to write a poem, and then hear it with sound--and have some of the lines spoken or echoed by the people who said them? What's lost? What's gained?
Lu: When I first heard about this idea--using poets as reporters in teams with radio producer and photographers--I thought it sounded awesome. And I thought it was insane and it would never work. I think these pieces create a new genre of radio (and maybe poetry) and I want to do it too. My question: You write about having a few ideas of what the pieces might sound like. Did you ever think "this may not work"--that could simply not combine with radio to make a meaningful documentary? When did you realize it was working?
Just so you know - this touched me to the quick (I had to shout it from the rooftops and send it to all my people).
My question is, is there anyway to make this an ongoing project? Can we see and hear and feel these people again at different points in their lives over time?
Jesse,
It's great to see you here! I have to say that I'm used to the oral/performance aspect of poetry since I've been very active in the past in the reading and slam circuit. But radio is a totally different story! Since Brenda, Lu and I were all working concurrently, I sometimes was listening to audio and looking at photos in order to cite voices and images in the poems, so having the subject(s) say those words were incredibly appropriate. On the other hand, having ambient and other dialogue spliced into the poem was totally foreign to me. At first I felt like the sound was kind of an interruption of the poem--at least of the music I had in my head. But as I sat with the audio versions Lu put together, I realized that these recordings are much more honest than that. They are about voice, and all our voices intermingling as a chorus.
What's lost is my own version of what I thought the poem was. What's gained is what the poem is in the world beyond my own voice. That gain is a good thing, and I'm glad to have experienced it now, earlier rather than later in my career as a writer.
I was listening to the first pieces on Studio 360, and was intrigued.
This is an interesting way to convey a sense of place and person, as it certainly drives the point of view: this is by putting it into a poet's voice, you really know that this is Susan's perspective on things, which I think adds another layer to a traditional documentary.
I was wondering if you considered having the women themselves read the poems aloud? Also, what were their reactions to the poems?
Thanks for stopping by and sharing the work with your people!
This project is borne from a long-term documentary project by Brenda Ann Kenneally. It’s called Upstate Girls and you can learn more about it here, http://www.upstategirls.org/ There are several teasers for Brenda’s film there. When Susan and I began working with Brenda, she’d already been shooting photos and video for over five years. One huge reason this project turned out as well as it did is because Brenda has such deep roots with the women. When we came along, they were already very accustomed to being shadowed and were incredibly open with us.
Did I ever think that it might now work? Uhm... of course! All the time. I knew Brenda and Susan would both deliver great work, but I wasn’t convinced that it would come together. At the beginning I told my friends that it could be great or a really spectacular train wreck! I have to admit a lot of people were lukewarm on the idea, including I learned later, some of the MQ2 judges and my colleagues at Studio 360. But the spirit of the MQ2 grant was all about trying something new, so there was nothing to loose, really. There was always the fall back position of having Susan read the poems and not using any documentary recordings. In fact, that’s what we did with the “Women of Troy” slideshow, except Brenda reads that poem. When Susan’s first poems came in, I stopped thinking about a possible train wreck. The poems were funny and captured the spirit of each of the women. Plus, they were rooted in scenes, just like any good radio... and I had audio of those scenes. At that point my worry became more about doing justice to Susan’s poems and to each of the girls. Just a Girl was the first piece I cut -- I'm glad you like it! -- and that’s when I got excited that it could work.
I think this is more a question for Susan, but I’ll give a quick response.
When we first started we did speak about the possibility that poems be written in the voice of our subjects, but as it turned out the poems were written in the third person. For that reason, it would have felt strange to have Billie Jean read “Just a Girl” or DJ read “The Cutting Place.”
Brenda read “Women of Troy.” That decision came from a conversation with Jeremiah Zagar, a friend of mine who worked with me to cut the slideshow. Originally we cut the piece using Susan’s voice and something about it just didn’t feel quite right. The photos are so potent that it felt like it needed the voice of a woman of the place. A woman who’d lived hard. And of course, we had a woman like that in Brenda. She grew up in the neighboring town of West Albany in a situation not unlike Billie Jean and DJ. Brenda writes about it in her essay for the VQR. http://www.vqronline.org/articles/2009/fall/kenneally-upstate-girls/ Susan also wrote a poem about Brenda. It’s called “Cry Baby” and you can see it here on Transom. http://transom.org/?page_id=5289.
First of all, I want to echo the accolades that have come already for this series... This is truly inspiring work, and pushes the genre boundaries of public radio in exciting ways...
My question/comment: ... Having a poet serve as the "reporter" brings an emotional honesty and a necessary subjectivity to the telling of these stories... Susan is offering up her version of the lives of these women-- which, of course, is what is always happening, when a reporter tells a radio story... But, in these pieces, the old inclination towards "objective journalism" falls away to create an interesting hybrid: the poet's perspective evoking the subject's perspective, backed up by the documentary sound... which, in some ways, solidifies what the poet is saying, makes it "the reality."
What do you think non-poet reporters can glean from this? Do you think there are elements from your experience with this documentary-radio-poetry that those of us that produce more straight-up radio stories (without the asset of a poet!) can take from this and use in our own work?
woa. am in awe. what's going on here feels not only a like a mixing of forms (reporting and poetry, sound and words), but a mixing... of... i can't quite explain it. Time. The audio gathered is so immediate: we are WITH Billie Jean on flag day, as she marches about, gets picked up, forgets the juice. It has the exhilarating and overwhelming feeling of present-tense, where you don't how to make sense of so many stimuli... and at the same time, you are hearing poetry. thoughtful, beautiful verses that have clearly taken the time, weeks... months after the event to make sense of it. reflect on it. reframe and refocus it.
sorry. im moved and excited. let me get to the question!
LU: did you feel like, in editing, you became a poet? Like you were choosing tape differently than you normally would? (and did you ever feel scared to make editorial choices, did it ever feel like you were sort of... "messing with" Susan's poem?)
SUSAN: what was it like for you to be a reporter? Did you feel the pressure of this going out to a different type of audience? Did it affect your writing? Your observing even?
Congrats all around. I'm just bowled over. I second the above questions and comments.
I have a question for you three: have you heard any feedback from the women of Troy themselves? How concerned are you with your subjects' feelings regarding their representation? It seems to me that there is always a certain negotiation that happens among the documentarians and the documented--but ultimately one person is taking the photos or writing the words or cutting the tape.
I just wanted to thank all of the folks who volunteered to help me transcribe tape this summer. I will never be able to repay you.
A round of applause for Shira Bannerman, Alix Blair, Julia Botero, Autumn Caviness, Brooke Darrah, Matt Frassica, Josie Holtzman, Sarah Jessee, Laura Mayer, David Maxon, Rachel McCarthy, Katie Mingle, Annie Minoff, Heather Radke, Lara Ratzlaff, Shreya Shah, Megan Stacy, Courtney Jean Stein, Allison Swaim and Ari Zeiger. And of course enormous thanks to Erin Davis who helped me throughout the project. I could not have survived without you Erin!
If I have missed anyone, please shout out and be recognized.
What an extraordinary creation and collaboration this is. I am haunted by it. Inspired by it. The many layers, the immediacy, the sting of it and the spirit.
I feel the ground shifting in our documentary world when I come into this work. I imagine the ground shifted for all of you involved. It is one of the most honest, artistic, hard-hitting, soul-shaking projects I've seen in a long time, and must have been hard as hell to get as right as you all did. I'm working up to asking questions. But first, hat's off to all of you for pioneering, for bearing witness, for making it through all the levels of collaboration and compromise that surely were hard to navigate.
My questions -- Brenda and Susan, what are you thinking when you listen and watch this now? Were you afraid to enter in, that your work in your medium would some how get lost, changed, compromised?
Lu, my question for you (and Emily and Erin)... This feels like music to me. The twinned voices of the women of Troy and Susan, the rhythm, the sparse and intermittent voice peering through the poem. The transparent quality of it, mixed with its steely power. I stumbling toward a question. I guess my question is about the interviews and conversations and documentation of the women in their lives. I just want to know more, and how you found the texture and approach.
Ted, I hear you triggered this whole thing. What light bulb went off in your head that made you say yes, and what other possibilities does the collaboration suggest to you? What are you thinking as you watch/listen?
Again, deep regard to all for stretching the boundaries out in such a powerful, lyrical and riveting way and for making sure that the women of Troy are chronicled and heard.
Congratulations! This is such good documentary work.
I've had to listen and re-listen to these pieces a few times, take in the photos and the slideshows ... and it's amazing. To me, each of the audio pieces/poems carries the depth and open-endedness of the photos. The poems took me some place essential without summing things up too much of any scene or person, which i think is nearly impossible to do with narration or tape alone. The audio made it such an intimate place for me to hear these poems. And the photos are amazing. It's great to hear the poems in compliment to the images.
I guess I have a question for each of you. In the creating or hearing or seeing of these final mixed-medium works, where did the overlaps & repetitions in what you were seeing or hearing or saying really work for you, giving new depth or impact to an idea? And I guess along those lines, were there any places where that overlap was challenging--making anything feel too simplistic or overly revealed?
Thanks for the question, Davia. The light bulb for me was seeing poet C.D. Wright's amazing collaboration with photographer Deborah Luster to create the book One Big Self. That book reminded me of what I loved most of about some Depression-era writing, like Muriel Rukeyser's criminally under-appreciated book of poems U.S. 1 (1938) and the collaboration between writer James Agee and photographer Walker Evans to create Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941). These writers were working in an era when documentary photography was just starting to come into its own (Walker Evans complained that Agee got all the best material because he could work at night when people are more reflective and candid), and they were exploring the documentary possibilities of poetry and poetic prose. Then New Criticism came along and stomped all of that out. Seeing C.D. Wright's book made me think that it might be an art form worth reviving. I was especially interested in this idea if it could be combined with radio documentary--which seems to me the best and most widely available form of documentary these days. Lu, much to my surprise, loved the idea and really ran with it. She's the one who envisioned not just recording the process of making the poem but actually bringing the audio of the experience into the recitation of the poem. What you end up with is something more distilled than raw audio but much more visceral than a simple reading. I think we're all thrilled with the results and deeply hopeful that we can find supporters to make this an ongoing series. These pieces are complicated and expensive to produce, but the results repay the hard work and long hours that everyone had to put in.
I want to respond to several questions, but first I want to second Lu’s comment that Brenda really was our key to capturing such vivid, intimate moments with the girls. Brenda has been following these women for the last six years through film, stills, and a graphic novel project, and because she had already developed deep relationships with them, we were accepted pretty quickly into their circles.
What do you think non-poet reporters can glean from this? Do you think there are elements from your experience with this documentary-radio-poetry that those of us that produce more straight-up radio stories (without the asset of a poet!) can take from this and use in our own work?
I really wrestled with the idea of journalistic integrity with this project. There was a tearful moment early on when I confessed to Brenda and Lu that I wasn’t being a very good journalist because of my emotional attachments to some of these girls. In many ways I think poetry is the right medium for something like this because verse is about empathy and specific human connection. I also didn’t have to worry about excluding myself and my views from the process—I’m not the invisible observer that I think journalists sometimes have to be. What the poetry afforded me was a kind of release—not from the truth but from objectivity. In this case, subjectivity got us closer to the truth. Brenda and I throwing our own POVs into the mix is what I think takes this reporting to a new level: there is the audio event itself, and then one of us commenting on the event with an image or observation.
I’m not sure yet how this model can be helpful for straight-up radio reporting—I will have to consider that some more. But perhaps one way to address it might be collaboration—having that extra layer of perspective.
For me, one of the more challenging aspects of the project for me was letting go... I usually report and write pieces of my own, so co-reporting and working with a poet was a new experience for me. Ted and I did encourage Susan to consider certain ideas since we both spent time speaking with Brenda and in my case, traveled to Troy to meet some of the women. But ultimately we wanted Susan to lead the process and follow her own interests. Luckily, David Krasnow at Studio 360 understood the importance of that and encouraged the same. I think everyone involved had to do a lot of letting go.
Susan and I conducted almost all of the interviews together. We also spent a tremendous amount of time in the field (in public radio terms). We spent two weeks in Troy. Susan had a month of writing time in between those two weeks. On the first trip, we had very little set in stone. We interviewed each of the women and spent much of our time following the women as they went about their normal lives. We went to several Mother’s Day celebrations, many visits to social services offices, a karaoke night, food shopping. On the second trip we could be more directed. Still, we didn’t plan as much I normally would. We didn’t ask them to go to the Office of Temporary Assistance or to the Flag Day parade. We tried to gauge what was important to them and then follow them, there.
When it came time to cutting, Emily asked the usual question, what’s your best tape? The answer was the pick-up scene from the Flag Day parade in “Just a Girl.” It was an outrageous moment to witness. I could not believe there wasn't a lick of self consciousness on Billie Jean's part. From there, I used the poem as a guide. In a way these pieces were easier to cut that a more traditional piece because the writing was already there, the structure was dictated. It really was about finding the right tape to use and to balance the tape with the poem. Emily encouraged me to integrate the tape and the poetry as much as possible. After the first cut, there were many very small changes in pacing and tape selection. A lot of noodling.
I hope Emily will chime in here because she was an enormous part of this whole enterprise, these radio pieces are as much hers as they are Susan’s or mine.
Uh, no. I am no poet. In fact, I don’t know very much about poetry and I think that my relative inexperience in this area was a good thing. I could react to the poems as an average listener, not as a poetry insider.
Did you ever feel scared to make editorial choices?
Indeed. Susan and Brenda's work is so beautiful. I felt... how do I say this? Very responsible. The radio pieces had to do justice not only to the women in the poems, but to Susan and Brenda's work.
The entire time I was cutting, I worried about Susan because really I was “messing with” her poems. We dropped lines of dialogue from poems and instead added the audio... We had Brenda read one of them... It was a great relief when Susan liked the pieces.
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