Sound/Off Poetry Reading: Meg Day at the Guggenheim
Meg Day, the 2024 Poet-in-Residence at the Guggenheim and the judge of this year’s PJI Prize, begins their forthcoming “Ekphrasis in Air” exhibit with a plaque inviting readers to consider how architecture can be a poem. At Sound/Off, a poetry event organized by Day on Wednesday, December 11, in the architectural wonder of the Guggenheim Rotunda, architecture was never far from mind as Deaf and hard-of-hearing poets took center stage to relay their work. Some signed their poems, which were interpreted in spoken English; some spoke their poems, which were interpreted into American Sign Language (ASL), and one, Raymond Antrobus, spoke and signed his poem in British Sign Language (BSL) while an interpreter next to him rendered the work in ASL. The stage lights projected dual shadows of the sign language onto the white wall behind the stage, filling the rotunda as the poems merged with the architecture of the space.
Meg prefaced the reading by stating they wanted audiences to be comfortable and free to move around, exit, focus, or drift off. The inclusive and accessible space provoked a variety of responses to the poems. There were tears, laughter, clapping, visual applause, some videotaping on their cellphones, some closing their eyes. The event featured readings from Abby Haroun, Raymond Luczak, Noah Buchholz, Raymond Antrobus, Sam Rush, and Camisha Jones. Their themes ranged from Buchholz’s Deaf grandmother who was barred from learning ASL, empowerment in Haroun’s “I am a Black Deaf Woman” and the biological term “spandrel” in Rush’s sweeping poem on the belief in God as a “revolutionary accident.” Together, the poems made their own architectural narrative model, rendering their progression an exhibit in themselves on display.
After the poetry reading, the audience was invited to twirl up the rotunda to the sixth floor to see Day’s exhibit, which featured three video screens with projections of poets signing their poetry. A notable choice was for these signed poems, a mix of BSL and ASL, to have no captioning. Viewers, likely used to subtitles on videos, watch the poems progress and move between the alcoves with the screens. In an intentionally inclusive space, what might the videos, devoid of the crutch of English, mean for the majority of museum-goers who do not sign?
The plaques next to the screens explain the works and their context, and while perhaps initially perplexing to a hearing, non-signing viewer, one realizes that this ambiguity is felt at any museum. You peer at a Picasso that is hopelessly confusing before reading a plaque that gives you a title, context, and meaning. Day’s projections follow this ambiguity while reversing the typical imbalance of prioritizing spoken over signed languages.
At the reading, the audience sat in chairs on the ground floor, but many also lined the first level of the rotunda, testifying to the distance sign language can travel up and out. The poetry reading and Day’s forthcoming exhibition uplift the Deaf and hard-of-hearing community at the famous Guggenheim Museum, bringing their creativity, experience, and wisdom to New York City as its effects spiral beyond the rotunda and into the city’s architecture and people.
We are excited to have Meg Day judge the PJI Prize this year, and we cannot wait to continue to learn from their invaluable work at the Guggenheim as the 2024 poet-in-residence.
Photo credits: Alex Tischer
