Over the course of several months, I had the great privilege of corresponding with Virginia Konchan via post. At the time, I was traveling from one literary arts fellowship to the next, and Virginia had just moved from Chicago to Montreal. Our epistolary correspondence was in some ways, an attempt to trace our movements in space and time. The various postcards and letterhead that we chose became a ledger, onto which geography was subtly and indelibly inscribed. Our epistolary practice also became a way of tracing the relationship between voice, body, and material artifact. The shape of each postcard, and each envelope, inevitably dictated how much could be said, and exactly how that sentiment was conveyed. Writing letters became an exercise in constraint, an opening of possibilities by narrowing the field of potential inquiry.
All too often, collaboration remains purely in the realm of the textual, and this is largely a result of the digitized cultural landscape that we inhabit. For me, this correspondence represented a return voyage from a place where technology is always present. Even more importantly, the physicality of correspondence prompted me to attend to aspects of writing that are often forgotten when inhabiting a more digitized rhetorical space. Certainly, my hand was unpracticed at writing letters. But as our correspondence began to unfold, writing (and thought itself) were nonetheless revealed as embodied endeavors. The made thing, whether a poem, a letter, or the wax seal on an envelope, became as a projection of the body, an artifact of one's movement through a place that is now inhabited more fully and mindfully.
It is truly a delight to close with a selection of letters....
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