Lisa Robertson and Lytle Shaw talk
by Taya Hanauer
Lytle Shaw and Lisa Robertson are two friends who work together. They are both writers of fiction and poetry, inspired by each other’s work, although never collaborating on one written piece. Last Monday afternoon, May 25th, they held a reading at Rongwrong gallery space in Amsterdam in which they read aloud short excerpts from already published work. It was an intimate reading in the small quarters of Rongwrong, with about 20 people who came to listen. Shaw read from his book The Moiré Effect and Robertson read various pieces out of The Shipwreck and Cabinet Magazine.
They are a funny pair, sitting next to each other, Shaw with his stylish hat and Robertson with big, vintage glasses. They read intermittently, Shaw beginning with a fast pace of words, and then Robertson taking over with an only slightly slower rhythm. Their familiarity with each other’s work is obvious in their way of joint reading and the style of their writing. Both are highly descriptive of events and situations, aesthetic in the way their writing flows from one sentence to the next.
Shaw read from his book, which fictionalized his own process of research about the mysterious biography of photographer Ernst Moiré. Partly focused on himself and partly on Moire, his narrative was broken into different fragments taken out of the full story. After each fragment Robertson began, reading varied writings of hers, mostly poetry. Her writing contains an almost overwhelming amount of adjectives and complicated words which are rarely heard in everyday life, often describing the simplest of actions using many words. Shaw and Robertson create poetry together in this way, they seem to make what would otherwise be a simple description into a slightly indecipherable question, a plant maybe.
Lytle Shaw and Lisa Robertson are two friends who work together. They are both writers of fiction and poetry, inspired by each other’s work, although never collaborating on one written piece. Last Monday afternoon, May 25th, they held a reading at Rongwrong gallery space in Amsterdam in which they read aloud short excerpts from already published work. It was an intimate reading in the small quarters of Rongwrong, with about 20 people who came to listen. Shaw read from his book The Moiré Effect and Robertson read various pieces out of The Shipwreck and Cabinet Magazine.
They are a funny pair, sitting next to each other, Shaw with his stylish hat and Robertson with big, vintage glasses. They read intermittently, Shaw beginning with a fast pace of words, and then Robertson taking over with an only slightly slower rhythm. Their familiarity with each other’s work is obvious in their way of joint reading and the style of their writing. Both are highly descriptive of events and situations, aesthetic in the way their writing flows from one sentence to the next.
Shaw read from his book, which fictionalized his own process of research about the mysterious biography of photographer Ernst Moiré. Partly focused on himself and partly on Moire, his narrative was broken into different fragments taken out of the full story. After each fragment Robertson began, reading varied writings of hers, mostly poetry. Her writing contains an almost overwhelming amount of adjectives and complicated words which are rarely heard in everyday life, often describing the simplest of actions using many words. Shaw and Robertson create poetry together in this way, they seem to make what would otherwise be a simple description into a slightly indecipherable question, a plant maybe.
