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Jim Cogswell and Franc Nunoo-Quarcoo Celebrate National Poetry Month, AAFF

The window of the Red Hawk Grill, with a poem adhered on in vinyl lettering
Jim Cogswell and Franc Nunoo-Quarcoo: Longing, A Documentary. Shot List. Ann Arbor, MI 2023 / adhesive vinyl on glass 

A new project by visual artist Jim Cogswell and designer Franc Nunoo-Quarcoo will celebrate National Poetry Month and the Ann Arbor Film Festival this spring. The two Stamps faculty have collaborated to install Longing, A Documentary. Shot List,” a poem by Anne Carson, in adhesive vinyl on the street-side windows of Ann Arbor’s Red Hawk Bar & Grill, where it will be on view from March 20 to the end of April.

By using poetic text in a window installation this project challenges established notions of what a poem is and how it should be read. It explores the difference between a poem seen in its bubble of white on the pages of a book, read aloud in hushed silence or in the privacy of solitary thought, and a poem that is encountered as it floats in shifting light amidst glare and reflections, shops and destinations, washed in weather and moving traffic, hovering in front of diners at their meal.