Corwin, Nina 1999; 2001; 2017
Mixed Bag Series – 5 Chicago Performance Poets
with Kent Foreman, Marvin Tate, Regie Gibson, and Maria McCray
She learned the meaning of industry
From Sunday school sermons on
Protestant virtue,
the third little pig,
the spider not the fly,
and the squirrel putting up supplies
for the barren season–
– Nina Corwin, “Lady Sisyphus”
Broadside of “Lady Sisyphus” by Nina Corwin.
Buy this broadside in the Mixed Bags Series⇒
Conceived under a whore’s moon, no doors
on our seventh house, we wear our bodies uneasily
as if our skins shrunk in the drying cycle,
walk both sides of yellow lines
or sit at the edges of chairs, one tooth loose,
the new one pushing close behind.
– Nina Corwin, “Inhabitants of the Cusp”
Read this post-interview piece on Nina Corwin from Fifth Wednesday Journal:
An Interview with Nina Corwin
Poet, editor, literary curator, and psychotherapist are just some of Nina Corwin’s identities. She first became involved in Fifth Wednesday Journal (FWJ) in 2007, when the journal was just starting. “I agreed to edit one issue because I was afraid to get in over my head,” she admits.
Incision to be scheduled in bull’s-eye red.
Enchanted scalpels side-by-side,
line up to make the cut un-kind.
They come to fetch (clip-clop) in step.
– Nina Corwin, “Ligamentary, My Dear”
Watch Nina Corwin read her poem “Variations on a Theme by Pablo Neruda” with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra:
Nina Corwin Poetry: Variations on a Theme by Pablo Neruda 11.13.11.AVI
Original poem performed on a program with the Chicago Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra. From The Uncertainty of Maps (2011). On this Sunday afternoon, I had the wonderful opportunity to perform 3 poems along with the narration for Benjamin Britten’s “Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra.
