"Immersion Exhibit"
Writer: Erica Anzalone
Artist: Ashley Siebels
Erica’s poem is a response to the recent
oil spill in the Gulf. We act as though the natural world is an “Immersion
Exhibit” we can visit and be entertained by, like going on
safari. The poem seeks to disturb the audience with a truth so
obvious that we need to mask it with language such as “habitat”: there is no
distinction between our human world and the natural one. Both spill over into
the other. Disasters such as the Gulf oil spill point to this dire truth we
need to face if we – both animal and human – are to survive. As poem displaced
onto billboard Immersion Exhibit serves as a warning. Poems
are not quiet creatures that ought to be locked up in an obscure literary
magazine. Ashley’s work as a graphic artist using a Holga camera makes the poem
public, political, and hopefully an agent of social change.