Hobart Book Village Festival of Women Writers again welcomes
Margot Farrington
A poet, performer, and artist, Margot Farrington returns to Hobart Festival of Women Writers 2018. Margot Farrington’s poetry collections includeRising and Falling, Flares and Fathoms, and Scanning for Tigers. Her other published writings include essays and interviews. She has been awarded fellowship from Norton Island, The I-Park Foundation, and The Clocktower. She has read and performed throughout the US and in France, England, Wales, and The Netherlands.
Margot Farrington
Stephanie Nikolopoulos speaks with Margot Farrington about her poetry and performance.
SN: In addition to being the author of three poetry collections—your most recent being Scanning for Tigers (2014)—you are a performer, trained in theatre at an early age. Your readings have been described as “dynamic.” What is the relationship between poetry and performance for you?
Margot: My relationship between poetry and performance: close! Poetry began as an oral art and provides that tribal gathering we all relish. Mine is a tandem path, rocking back and forth between writing and performance. You don’t study theater without coming away with skills: how timing matters, how to hold an audience, how to be heard (with or without a mike), and yes, how to be still and silent, too.
SN: As you write your poems, do you consider how you will read them?
Margot: I never consider how I’ll read a poem while writing it. When reading it to listeners, the greatest gift I can give them is spontaneity. Something in the read or recited poem should always remain fluid, open to surprise.
SN: Do the words have a performance of their own as they are written on the page?
Margot: That’s interesting! I suppose the words create their own performance, and their own “rehearsal” too, as the poet allows them to jostle and shift and take stage in the revision process.
For Festival of Women Writers 2018, Margot Farrington will present the exciting and totally innovative workshop, Wild Card: The Search For A Stranger Voice
Using the deck of cards as a catalyst, this workshop frees participants to speak out in the voices of playing cards—to exult or lament or scheme as imagination dictates. “Playing” and writing in two distinctly crafted rounds, participants will don dramatic personae through dealt cards to generate drafts for new poems or short prose pieces. No knowledge of card games is necessary. – Margot Farrington
for a complete description of all of the workshop and Intensives being offered for Festival of Women Writers 2018, go to workshops
Margot Farrington makes collage and mixed media works and considers them companions to her poems and other writings. Her work will be a part of, “In Our Image”, an exhibit of art by women installed at the Hobart Community Center during Festival of Women Writers 2018, September 7, 8 &9th.
Deep pictorial space and dynamic composition interest me, and often elements of the fantastic as well. My “dreamscapes” (a term that might serve as applied to my collages) represent places I’d like to visit. – Margot Farrington
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