Intimates & Fools: A Collaborative Book with art by Sally Deskins

My collaborative book with artist Sally Deskins was released January 1st this year and today is the book’s Half Birthday. Hooray! Happy Half-Birthday Intimates and Fools! I thought I’d post an update on all the fun things and happenings that have been going on.

The book couples poetry and body art and illustrations by Sally Deskins. Intimates and Fools intimates the complicating pairing of the female form and cultural notions of beauty while playfully seeking to bare and bear such burdens of their weight. The poetry explores notions of the bra and its place near the hearts of women, while contemplating literary and pop cultural allusions and illusions of such intimate apparel. The body art and illustrations make vivid and bright the female form while calling into question the cultural narratives on such various shapes we hold dear, be they natural, consumer, or whimsy.

Sally and I have had the opportunity to talk about Intimates and Fools in recent interviews. With Julie Brooks Barbour Sally talked about the process of adding the text to her art for Connotation Press.

To be honest, each page’s process was different. I didn’t originally start from beginning and go to the end. I selected phrases and sentences I liked, drew images, scanned them into the computer and tried out fonts, but nothing clicked. So I decided to write it myself, first writing the history of the bras in pencil on page one and two. I wasn’t happy with my own handwriting of course, so I erased that, and liked the erased, raw look, and kept some of that in there, as you can see.

Forthcoming in AMRI we discussed the entire collaborative process with Kristina Marie Darling. Specifically, I talk about thinking about how a poem might appear in a book when coupled with poetry. Here’s another sneak peak.

Ultimately, Sally decided to handwrite the poems—a decision I loved. When she illustrated the poem, she broke the lines where it made sense from a visual artistic and literary perspective. It was a “changing, shifting, and expanding” moment for me as a poet, because her visual presentation of the poem was not what I had typed into the computer when it was my poem alone. And yet, this was a collaboration. Sally’s art was being transformed to tell a story about bras and suddenly, so was my poetry.

In Mixitini, this super cool journal that focuses solely on collaborations, we discussed the collaborative work we’d done with other artists and writers. Here’s a sneak peak.

My first collaboration felt organic, fun, and playful. I think there’s something fresh and delightful when art and poetry are combined. The interpretation of poetry that happens when paired with art offers a new way of looking at words and art.

Editor Mel Shapcott featured Intimates and Fools in Wild Women Rising. Sally talked about making body prints.

So at once, the real feelings of the paint on my body is utterly physical and resounds as the sensations are stamped onto paper or canvas. Too it is a means of working out all of the noise of body image — what I should look like according to magazines, movies, the clothing ads, my mind. In these prints, my body looks beautiful in the various acrylic colors. As I mix and swirl the paint on my body parts, the image comes out skewed and conceptual, and beautiful in this state — various colors, shapes, sizes. It is perhaps sensual, perhaps an object in itself, but not decried or distanced, violent or Photoshopped to some advertiser’s view of perfection. It is stunning in its complexity, simplicity and in definition yet materiality, a peaceful yet spirited view of the female figure.

In Blotterature we talked about our personal history with the bra and the research we did for the book. I discussed reading about the bra in college.

My first intellectual endeavor into bras was in college when I added a second major of women’s studies after taking one women’s literature class. I took scores of classes—sociology of gender, feminist theory, African American women’s literature—and somewhere in there I read The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls by Joan Jacobs Brumberg, a look at the ways in which girls have worked on improving themselves and how that has shifted from a focus on the personality to a focus on the body. One section on body projects made note of bras and I found it fascinating that all women didn’t always wear bras.

We talked about the collaborative composition in Storyacious. Sally discussed her creative process.

After reading Madeline’s poem, I decided to let it sit, scratch down visions and ideas, and make dozens of body prints in preparation. Instead of the larger torso body prints I had been doing for the gallery shows, I did smaller, page-sized prints of various body parts to allow closer focus and more pause and insight for each word.

Beyond written interviews, we gave radio interviews in It’s the Beat! (mp3 starts at 8:05-15:04), KIOS-FM, Omaha Public Radio, and The Joy Factor.

Our book has also been featured in Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, Painters & Poets, Best Dressed Wardrobe, Z-Composition,Luciferous, Daily Dose of Lit, Certain Circuits, and Miracle Ezine.

Intimates and Fools has been reviewed in [Pank], Busting and Droning Magazine, Ivory Owl Reviews, Broad Blogs, Underrated Reads, Luna Luna, and Connotation Press.

“Poet Laura Madeline Wiseman takes what every girl and woman has thought about her breasts and adds a imaginative twist. Artist Sally Deskins fun, contemporary-styled illustrations take it even further.”- Underrated Reads

“…for me what Intimates and Fools is aiming to get to the heart of, and often does quite handily: the struggle against both nature and the commodification of women, a struggle that is defined with and against sexuality, and a struggle that is far more complex than it at first seems. Wiseman and Deskins have created a deceptively pleasant collaboration here, one that is both arch and light-hearted, and which deepens the more it is read and pondered. There are few bra-wearers who won’t see themselves in these clever poems and illustrations; there are few readers who won’t look at bras, and the world, a bit differently after reading this book.” – Luna Luna

“Intimates and Fools is a visually stunning book. This insightful collaboration between poet Laura Madeline Wiseman and artist Sally Deskins gives us not only a look into the bras that hold women’s breasts, but uncovers the history and honesty of what women wear beneath their garments… Throughout, we never leave what holds up the breasts, what women desire in a bra, what women might do without them, even how these intimate garments are cared for over time. This is a book about the female body and what adorns it, what is bought and given away in so many forms.” – Connotation Press

“What we wear under our clothes tells a quiet story, as playfully and artfully explored in the book “Intimates and Fools,” with poetry by Laura Madeline Wiseman and artwork by Sally Deskins… The concept of having a book of illustrated poems dedicated to breasts and undergarments is charming and yet sweetly simple… The artwork of Deskins is so vibrant, with playful poems surrounding their form… the overall feeling from the collection is that of simple joys in these sacred garments we hold close.” – Busting and Droning Magazine

“Deskins’s own art, colorful sketches and body prints, unapologetically splash across the page in bright strokes while Wiseman’s handwritten prose snakes up and around, balancing and accompanying the art… It made me want to linger, to touch the page, run my hands across the color and script. It was more of an experience than just interpretation… it’s what’s just under the busy surface that’s most appealing: the wildly complex social constructs of female body, and the symbol of the bra as the ultimate carrier of all things female: shame, sexuality, strength.” – [Pank] Magazine

“Intimates and Fools is a cheeky, fun read…Laura Madeline Wiseman’s poetry will have you conspiratorially chuckling and each page of Sally Deskins’ painted illustrations are frame-worthy.” - Ivory Owl Reviews

“Women can be mistaken for their sexuality. Or, women can make their sexuality work for them. Intimates and Fools, with poetry by Laura Madeline Wiseman and illustrations by Sally Deskins, is a thought-provoking, conversation-starting coffee table book…Here, brassieres emerge as the main characters…In this love-hate relationship, bras just want a little appreciation. Don’t we all?”- Broad Blogs.

In March, I traveled to West Virginia where my collaborator currently lives. We had super fun reading together at a local art center there. In April, my collaborator traveled to Nebraska where I live. We gave two readings. At the Apollon, we read collaboratively.

Intimates and Fools has also been to readings in Chicago, South Dakota, and elsewhere. I will be giving a reading at MMLA in Detroit, MI about the collaborative process in the Fabricating the Body panel in November. Other recent readings are on our YourTube playlist.

Beautiful pages from Intimates and Fools with Sally’s original art have appeared in shows in galleries in Ohio and West Virginia, and will be featured in Sally’s series “What Will Her Kids Think?” in an exhibit at Future Tenant Gallery, August 8-24 in Pittsburgh. Pieces from that series also appeared at the Ohio University Eastern Campus, in St. Claireville, Ohio in February.

“Les Femmes Folles: WV” had a group exhibit at the Monongalia Art Center, Morgantown, West Virginia in March.

Intimates and Fools is available on Amazon and at readings and events. Check out Intimates and Fools from the library - Chattanooga Public Library,Chattanooga in TN; Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture at Duke University Library, The Jane Pope Geske Heritage Room of Nebraska Authors and Lincoln City Libraries in Lincoln, NE, Des Moines Public Library in IA. Or enter for a chance to win a copy in the Goodreads Book Giveaway .