Remnant Texts

Fifteen remnant text poems were created through the process of erasing John Frederick Lazell’s 1909 book, Some Summer Days in Iowa. In the book, which was published by The Torch Press in Cedar Rapids, Lazell describes the beauty and importance of Iowa’s natural landscape and expresses his fears about the development of the land. My intention in creating an erasure of Lazell’s text is to mirror the erasure of the natural landscape, leaving remnants. The remnant texts I have created through Lazell’s text reference both human memory and the land’s memory and are printed both as an edition of small broadsides and a series of seed packets, where the poem is on the inside of the packet.

Seed Packets: 2.5 x 2.5 inches
Broadsides: 4 x 6 inches
2020