6 Questions by Richard Loranger
6 QUESTIONS
This collection, written and read by Richard Loranger, contains six poems which are ekphrastic responses to six pieces of calligraphic art by Bill Mercer. They are part of a larger collection called The Questions Project.
The Questions Project began in San Francisco in the 1990’s as a collaboration between artist/musician/poet Bill Mercer and poet Paul Landry. Bill began by producing a number of calligraphic artworks using brushes and ink, each of which represented or suggested a question mark in some way or another. Paul responded by writing a poem for each piece which addressed, described, or depicted a question that each piece of calligraphy suggested to him. In the years since, Bill has created literally hundreds of such pieces, to which dozens of poets have responded.
This response was made into a chapbook with reproductions of the calligraphic works by Bill Mercer, and the reactive poems by Richard Loranger. In this case, Richard created a series of six poems, each of which both asks a question and depicts a specific type of question. He considers the title of each poem to be the accompanying artwork itself, though for the purposes of titling the recordings, he’s used the question specific to each piece.
The book is also available here as merch, and includes all six downloads with the purchase. Plus you get the calligraphy in the book!
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Richard Loranger is a multi-genre writer and performer who has been working around the United States for over forty years. He has done over 500 featured readings and performances from the Davis (CA) Jazz & Beat Festival to the main stage at Lollapalooza to The Bowery Poetry Club in New York. He is the author of six books and ten chapbooks of poetry and flash prose.