10.00am – 11.30am, 10 March 2024
Witness the world premiere of a new braided text co-written by poet Rebecca Sharp and environmental humanities researcher and author Monika Szuba, weaving together observations and encounters with landscape, seasons and other beings between Scotland and Germany/Poland. Structured as a series of emails containing strands of text, images, and field recordings, this innovative work entwines the authors’ evolving perspectives on nature, art, and the imagination. The performance will be followed by a special workshop with Elodie Laügt.
This event was held in partnership with StAnza.
Rebecca Sharp is a poet, playwright and interdisciplinary artist from Glasgow, based in Fife, Scotland. In 2022-2024 she was the inaugural Artist in Residence with the Centre for Energy Ethics (University of St Andrews), during which time she researched and wrote the poetry collection Long Field Loop (Tapsalteerie 2024), supported by Creative Scotland and the CEE. Her collection Rough Currency (Tapsalteerie 2021) explores the poetics of oil and the imagination, receiving a Literature Matters Award from the Royal Society of Literature, and an Art of Energy Award with the Centre for Energy Ethics. The film of her poem Velella velella (Steve Smart, Alex South) was shortlisted for the Scottish Arts Trust’s Scottish Landscape Awards 2023 and exhibited at City Art Centre, Edinburgh. www.rebeccajoysharp.com
Monika Szuba is a researcher and translator, Associate Professor in Literature at the Institute of English and American Studies, the University of Gdańsk and 2023 Landhaus Fellow at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society in Munich. Her research is concerned with modern and contemporary literature informed by environmental humanities, with particular interest in phenomenology. From 2011 to 2017 she was Deputy Director for Science at the International Between.Pomiędzy Festival of Literature and Theatre in Sopot. She is the author of two monographs, Contemporary Scottish Poetry and the Natural World: Burnside, Jamie, Robertson and White (Edinburgh University Press, 2019) and Landscape Poetics: Scottish Textual Practice, 1928-Present (Edinburgh University Press 2023).
I offer you a needle was co-written by Rebecca Sharp and Monika Szuba via a schedule of weekly emails between November 2023 and January 2024, including some images and sound recordings. The authors were supported by the Centre for Energy Ethics (University of St Andrews), the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society (Munich), and the Centre for Poetic Innovation. The text was first performed by the authors for StAnza: Scotland’s International Poetry Festival on 10th March 2024. A workshop accompanied the reading, co-designed and delivered by Elodie Laügt (CPI) and the authors, resulting in a new work co-written by participants, entitled ‘Braided encounters’, also published here.
For layout and accessibility purposes, two versions (PDF and web) of each text are proposed.
I offer you a needle – web version
I offer you a needle – PDF version