The best side job in the world

We're exploring jobs and art in this issue #146 of your weekly dose of fresh poetry

The Kunstmuseum in The Hague, by night.

There I was,
the only one in the
world not excited by Mondriaan.
Museum attendant:
great side-job.

The challenge when you’re young and want to go out with your friends is that your parents do not necessarily see the need to fund these endeavours. So, you need to find alternative income streams. For me, that often meant temporary jobs during vacations. One of these jobs was an amazing one: attendant at a museum of modern art. The museum has its home in a beautiful building, designed by renowned architect Berlage, and was, and still is, the top museum in my hometown. And I had a job there, surrounded by art. In fact, my job was to sit in a suite of 2 rooms, watching over the artworks on display there. Counting them every hour to be sure none had gone missing. Some of them, or actually: most of them, were quite valuable. One example: a small painting, smaller than a regular A4-size piece of paper, was valued at 36 million. So, counting needed to be done with precision, and people were free to look, but not touch. My only problem: the rooms were filled with paintings by Piet Mondriaan. And I did, and still do, not like Mondriaan. His early work is more to my taste, but these rectangles and lines in primary colours are not really my cup of tea. I understand it, but it just does not please me.

Still, it may very well have been the best side job I ever had.

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Poetics in life

Not long ago I shared the project

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by Kelly Mullins from

Poetry Trapper Keeper

. In the meantime, I have also participated in some collaborative art pieces, where the audience either gives input to the artist or builds on the work of the artist, using their art as a prompt for a new one. When I do this, I am always reminded of the fabulous work of Candy Chang. Enjoy her short TED Talk.

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Poetry elsewhere

Imagina a poem as art (okay, that wasn’t hard). Now, imagine that piece of art inspiring more pieces of art, because that’s why it was created. As a piece of art, and as a prompt for more art. That is what Ars Autopoetica is. A poem created by Sasha Stiles and her alter ego Technelegy. Now, to explain for those of you who don’t know them: Sasha is a wonderful human being, and Technelegy is an AI instance. Sasha trained her AI to produce poetry as she herself could have written it. Their output is a true collaboration between human and machine. What Sasha does is ground breaking, enjoy her broadsheet Ars Autopoetica.

Another groundbreaking poet is Ana Maria Caballero. She works in at least 2 languages, English and Spanish. And also has a collaborative work going, where she asks visitors to the POÈME SBJKT exhibition in Paris to add remarks to the manuscript of one of her books. This week, Ana bridged the gap between traditional poetry publications and the niche of digital blockchain poetry, in a collaboration with one of the oldest and biggest Spanish newspapers. If you understand Spanish, or even if you don’t, you can enjoy one of her two works in this project here: Nucléo familiar.

Publishing a poem every day does a lot to your work. The daily practice of writing helps you develop, even though not all the things you produce are maybe of the quality you like. Some may be gems, others not. And that in itself becomes the art. What happens with the words, should you publish all, when is something good (enough)? Now, I tend to not often share the work of

Patricia Finney

, because it’s hard for me to interact with, without the premium subscription, but her publication Terrible Daily Poems is certainly worth following. This poem is one example why:

Old Lady