Caroline Bergvall’s “Drift” at Calicoon Fine Arts

Poetry through fog

Last spring I discovered (and blogged about) Caroline Bergvall’s amazing book Drift, which brings together an experimental translation of the Old English poem The Seafarer — one of my very favorite poems — with the story of the Left-to-Die Boat, packed full of Algerian refugees in the Mediterranean in 2011.

Yesterday I parked on top of a 10″ high slab of ice to go see an installation version at Calicoon Fine Arts on Delancey St.

The show is a great extension of the book. Headsets dangling from the ceiling loop two audio clips, one of Bergvall reading a section from the translation and the other of her narration of the Left-to-Die Boat.

A half-dozen foggy panels reveal, if looked at from the right angle, selections from the poem.

A video screen in the back room mashes up other linguistic fragments in an ongoing cycle.

The guy who worked at the gallery said they were working on trying to bring Bergvall’s full multi-media performance of Drift to New York, maybe next year.A

A great way to re-view and re-think a great poem!