Kevin Killian & Wayne Koestenbaum Draw on Different Fields at Eastern Michigan University

In Ypsilanti, Michigan, Kelsey Hawkins-Johnson reports: Kevin Killian and Wayne Koestenbaum read and exhibited their visual works to Eastern Michigan University students and faculty as part of the BathHouse Reading Series, created by the Creative Writing Program at EMU. "In this series, poets discussed and showed their works 'Trance,' an altered space of consciousness and 'Pink,' a queer way of coding the world," reports The Eastern Echo. More:

Because it is interdisciplinary, the Creative Writing program was interested in the two poets not only for their achievement in writing, but also for their work in other mediums.

“They are very interdisciplinary and that is also what makes our program unique . . . it is introducing the very program where we ask students to draw on the different fields,” said Hume.

The event was opened up by Professor of Creative Writing at EMU, Rob Halpern, where he talked about his personal connection with the guest poets and the affect their writing has had on him when he was younger.

“They are among those writers who, without their writings, I would have been lost,” he said.

Killian, a San Francisco-based new narrative writer, playwright and photographer was the first to talk. He discussed his recent project, “Tagged,” an album of intimate photographs of nude poets, filmmakers and other artists who volunteered to have their photo taken.

There was a slideshow that displayed the photographs that focused on their genitals and/or a drawing of one by Raymond Pettibon that was to explore the models’ relationship with masculinity. Killian called it a “sex act without sex attached.”

The photographs were taken in a range of places from museums to hotels to even the models’ homes where the photographs slowly became more personal and intimate, displaying first the genitals, then the model’s names, then their jobs. The models included both identified straight and gay men.

“Once a picture is taken it’s in the past, dead and gone,” said Killian. “People would go crazy because they try to keep moments alive to make sense. The answer is to not think about it. That’s my thing with consciousness. It’s just not about them waking up, but being in a trance. The moment they are in the picture, they are in a trance. They are under my spell.”

Read all about it at The Eastern Echo.