Book of Responses by Ur Collective
I have stitched poetry, music and sound in a project called Book of Responses.

Book of Responses is a nazîre* poetry project, consisting of Monica Papi’s poems written with inspiration from world poets and some images, in which the poems are supported by texts, photographs, videos and sound recordings.

It would not be correct to describe a nazîre as an imitative poem or response in kind. “Nazîre writing” is a form of reproduction that develops both the art of poetry and the possibilities of elements such as word, sound, image and language, which are the basic materials used by poetry. Nazîre writing is a writing practice that puts two poets in a common area of interaction with their productions and turns the art of poetry into a real workshop.

Although this book project inherits the traditional nazîre writing that is lost today, aims to create a modern form of nazîre by deconstructing the concept. The project does not think of the concept of nazîre as writing a second poem using similar rhymes, forms and words, in response to a poem that has been written before. It tries to respond to what is written with visual materials, by going beyond the now dysfunctional traditional meaning of nazîre. It reformats the poem by editing it with digital and comtemporary elements such as video-photography-sound-graphics. Thus, it aims to create a new ground for joint work and thinking by combining poetry with different disciplines of art. In brief, the project is a kind of reproduction of a traditional art style within the contemporary. It reshapes the poems by using visual and audial materials and aesthetizes the texts authentically.

Due to these reasons, Book of Responses is not only a poetry book project. This work, built on a conceptual structure, is a work that tries to deal with the production of poetry with a curatorial practice under a careful selection, rather than working on poetry only in a poetic and editorial sense. This project adds a new perspective to the traditional nazîre writing. It questions the relationship between word-sound-image and movement by making studies in different forms (audial-visual) instead of writing a poem in response to the main poem. In this way, it does not limit writing a nazîre with the act of writing. It pushes the limits of what kind of reproduction field a poem can open to us by using concepts such as inspiration-influence-mimesis– association and it explores the effects in other artistic fields.

It traces the reproduction of tradition in the contemporary.

*A poem modeled after another poem in respect to both content and form. Nazîre is a poetry genre in Classical Ottoman poetry. It means a poem written by another poet in the same form, rhyme and meter. This tradition has passed into Turkish literature from Persian literature. The word comes from the Arabic word “equivalent”. Nazîre can be written to express the appreciation for a poem, to honor its poet, to make the poem shine or sometimes to surpass it. In Ottoman Poetry, the tradition of writing nazîre has been seen as a school for apprentice poets to learn the profession. Thus, new poets have learned to produce original works by developing themselves.

original text from : urcollective