Enid Mark Lecture 2024

Visual artist and poet Jen Bervin discusses her research-driven, multidisciplinary practice at the annual Enid Mark Lecture on Contemporary Book Arts & Poetry.

Best known for her art, poetry, and artist books weaving together situated poetics and entangled relationships between text and textiles, poet and critic John Yau calls Bervin an “unclassifiable artist and a deep reader" who "has expanded the notion of what it means to be a poet in the 21st century."

At her discussion, Bervin shared a range of projects involving collaborations with artists, scholars, and scientists, including a poem written nanoscale in the form of a silk biosensor with Tufts University’s Silklab; a 230-foot curvilinear hand-sewn scale model of the Mississippi; and a constellation of ongoing works related to Emily Dickinson’s manuscripts and material histories.