Poet Simone White led a literary presentation, co-sponsored by Washington University’s Center of the Literary Arts, in the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum on Friday, Oct. 13.

White is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania and also serves on the writing faculty of the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College. She is renowned for her literary works in poetry and prose. 

White’s presentation covered the idea of poetry as a means to bridge together art, language, and culture.

In blending art, language, and culture into one cohesive piece, White addressed how her most recent poems reflected the reconsideration of her own poetics, or methods of approaching poetry. She discussed her occupation’s relation to the visual arts and what her blackness and sexuality meant to her.

The presentation also touched on her fascination with Adam Pendleton’s “To Divide By,” a collection of paintings and drawings addressing existential questions. White commented that Pendleton’s art is his way of “asking us to think about how profound it is to be [ourselves].” 

White said that before she writes the first word of a piece, she reflects on her perspectives as a Black woman in response to art and expresses her ideas “through the expression of [her] difference and slackness and sexuality.”

She discussed how legibility, as in her form of self expression within the dimensions of culture, art, and language, is another factor that contributes to her poetry. 

“Legibility is proposed, assumed, and embedded within the acts of writing,” White said. “It encourages representation.”

White said that poetry makes it possible to think impossible thoughts that exceed what she calls the epistemological grid. She explained that this mentality is the key to poetic thinking.

Within the presentation, many of the works of visual art and poetry  shared are considered abstract, according to White. The dictionary definition, as White described, is that things don’t correspond to what we originally recognize as real. 

“Abstraction in writing is not necessarily the same,” White said. “Abstraction in writing is another level of thinking that goes beyond the original telling of the facts.”

Wrapping up the presentation, White told the audience to not feel oppressed by the historical context of a poem. She said that it should be natural to interact with our responses to poetry through a broad sense of art sensitivity.

Speaking to Student Life after the event, White shared her thoughts on the idea that creative practice and creative liberty are synonymous.

“For me, I think [they are the same],” White said. She added that both creative practice and creative liberty have helped her to do the kind of work that is meaningful to her.

The exhibition for Adam Pendleton’s “To Divide By” will be on view at the Kemper Art Museum Sept. 22 through Jan. 15.