Amaranth Borsuk’s work focuses on textual materiality—from the surface of the page to the surface of language.

Her most recent projects are the chapbook W/\SH: Initial Contact (Above/Ground, 2021), a speculative ecopoetic collaboration with Terri Witek; The Book: 101 Definitions (Anteism, 2021), a collection of definitions of the book by artists, writers, scholars, librarians, and book artists; and Curt Curtal Sonnet Corona (QPL, 2020), a printable chapbook of computer-generated curtal sonnets. Borsuk is also the author of The Book (MIT Press, 2018), a brief introduction to the book as object, content, idea, and interface published in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series.

Her books of poetry include Pomegranate Eater (Kore Press, 2016),  Handiwork (Slope Editions, 2012), selected by Paul Hoover for the 2011 Slope Editions Poetry Prize; and Tonal Saw (The Song Cave, 2010), a chapbook-length erasure. Abra (1913 Press, 2016), a book of mutating poems created with Kate Durbin, received an NEA-sponsored Expanded Artists’ Books grant from the Center for Book and Paper Arts at Columbia College Chicago and was released as a limited-edition book with a free iPad / iPhone app created by Ian Hatcher. The collaboration As We Know (Subito Press, 2014), selected by Julie Carr for the Subito Prize, reshapes 60 entries from Andy Fitch’s summer diary into a collective confessional/constructivist collage that foregrounds the tensions of authorship.

Collaboration and materiality are central to Borsuk’s practice. Together with Brad Bouse, she created Between Page and Screen (Siglio Press, 2012; Springgun Press, 2016), a book of augmented-reality poetry. It has been featured on Salon.com, BrainPickings, Wired, and other media sites and has been exhibited widely. Through a grant from CT@Work and SiteProjects, Inc., Borsuk and Bouse completed Whispering Galleries (2014), a site-specific interactive text work for the New Haven Free Public Libraries that uses the Leap gestural controller to invite visitors to brush the dust from a historic diary, revealing poems hidden within it. Borsuk’s other digital collaborations include Wave Signs, an immersive sound installation with Carrie Bodle; and The Deletionist, an erasure bookmarklet created with Nick Montfort and Jesper Juul.

Borsuk is currently an Associate Professor in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington, Bothell, where she also serves as Associate Director of the MFA in Creative Writing and Poetics. 

The book mentioned at the end of the interview was by Renee Gladman: Houses of Ravicka

Pomegranate Eater (Kore Press, 2016)

The Book (MIT Press, 2018)