by Rowan Johnson
SOU Class of 2025, Creative Writing

Emergency Eyewash with Siv St∅ldal and John Yau, Bee Wear, 2017-2023, wool, mesh, and cotton thread. Courtesy of Siv St∅ldal

Bill Barrette and John Yau, Big City Primer: Reading New York at the End of the Twentieth Century, offset-printed, bound, with hardboard portfolio, courtesy of John Yau

Essays, letters, a corporate email– any form of writing can feel daunting. We like having rules; a period goes at the end of a sentence, The start of every sentence must be capitalized, and commas have to be used to join two independent clauses. But what happens when writing asks you to disregard those rules? With poetry, things become less about grammar and more about rhythm, flow, and relationships between words and space. To manage the newfound freedom of language, poets will often place their own restrictions onto their writing. The most common type of constrained writing is an Abecedarian, or a poem where the first letter of each line follows the order of the alphabet (the first line starts with A, the next one starts with B, etc.). Even though writing with constraints seems counterintuitive to the creative nature of poetry, constraints can sometimes force writers to engage with material in ways they wouldn’t have otherwise. John Yau uses this format often in his poetry, particularly the constraint of overheard speech. Overheard speech can be anything heard out in public, from the television, or on signs and billboards. It captures the language around us, letting poets splice phrases to create new contexts and relationships between words. The Poetry Foundation explores other kinds of constraints such as syllabic verses and haikus, list poems, and letter constraints. Learn more about them with the link below, and visit the Schneider Museum of Art's Main Gallery to find John Yau’s poetry. 

Because of their delicate nature, John Yau’s poetry collection at the Schneider Museum of Art is kept behind glass. We appreciate your understanding and would like to point you to our PDF of book pages, where you can find scans of all the pages of displayed books. We hope you enjoy viewing them!

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/145052/the-choice-of-constraint

 

Max Gimblett and John Yau, I Wore Your Underwear Today, 1993/95, ed. 87/91, acrylic, polymer, and copper on hand-marbled paper, courtesy of Max Gimblett

With a long-standing connection to the literary world, marbled paper has graced book covers, end pages, and poetry since the early 10th century. The technique was first recorded in the Sichuan region of China, and from there spread to Japan, India, the Middle East, and then Europe. The process of marbling is extremely meticulous, with every step demanding precision and careful planning. In earlier times, artists had to have some understanding of chemical interactions as the ink had to be made by hand. In order to achieve the separated effect, artists had to know how to keep the colors from spilling into each other. Today, an array of materials can be marbled thanks to our production of specialized inks. Ceramics, textiles, and wood can all be found with intricate and unique patterns thanks to marbling techniques. Artist Max Gimblett uses flecks of copper in his marbling process for his piece with John Yau I Wore Your Underwear Today. Learn more about the history of marbling with the link below, and find I Wore Your Underwear Today in the Treehaven Gallery of the Schneider Museum of Art. 

https://www.messynessychic.com/2019/10/25/the-secret-art-of-marbling/