Vessels of Love
"Who are the Vessels of Love? The poets."
VOL: A message to the reader ~
Love poetry everyday
The Vessels of Love program navigates love in all its forms and relations over Valentine’s Day week.
The inaugural project culminated from a callout for poets to participate and contribute their original work and resulted in eight poets being selected by the accomplished Australian poet Adam Aitken. Participating poets undertook a workshop and tailored their own special performance delivery of their poetry incorporating the theme of love. Vessels of Love: ‘A message to the reader’ was partnered by The Streets of Barangaroo and sponsored by the City of Sydney as part of the activation campaigns in 2021.
The program explores the latest ideas and forms in contemporary Australian poetry on love in all its relations. The work presented is declarative, challenging and emotionally resonant. Engaging in diverse media the poets respond variously to the curatorial themes with new and repurposed work in forms of performance, installation, visual art and media poetics.
The galvanising effect that the first iteration has had on all engaged challenges poets to develop new work with rigor and ingenuity. We are excited for what echoes will reverberate ~
Poetry Sydney announces the appointment of a curatorial partnership with the contemporary arts collective The Salons for the fourth Vessels of Love in presentation of Love in transmission.
As Curatorial partners the Creative Directors of The Salons, will work to further the artistic vision and public impact of Vessels of Love together with poets, visual artists, musicians, program contributors and participants.
“Love travels via lines in transmission, in threads and thoughts, in communication. Across wires and waves between thumbs on keypads and satellites in the stars. Our loves are written in lines, often conveyed by electricity, silicon and precious metals.” ⎯Kelly Wallwork
Over the week of Valentine’s Day, 12 – 18 February, Vessels of Love 2024 presents the voices and visions of 7 poets from Sydney and regional NSW, to celebrate poetry’s enduring role to overcome love’s distance and disconnection.
Curated by The Salons, and inspired by Wallwork’s vision of love in transmission, we lean into the longing to harness the poetics of love, and tune into the possibilities of ready-at-hand modes of transmission. Thinking airwaves and waterways, we draw from the magical simplicity and accessibility of the letter, the photograph, the telephone, the radio, and the internet, channelling each as love’s instrument for poetic confession, connection and preservation. Our bespoke program will activate both the real and virtual worlds: visit Gleebooks bookstores to discover hidden poem-phones and poetry art cards; enjoy short poetry films each day online; and hear performance poets and spoken word artists on indie radio. Vessels of Love 2024 also invites the broader online poetry and arts community to partake in our tides of love experiment, where shorelines will be transformed with sand-writings and eco-sculptures.