Amaranth Borsuk


Amaranth Borsuk is a poet known for her experiments with textual materiality and digital poetry. She is currently an Associate Professor at the University of Washington Bothell.

Life

was born in Meriden, Connecticut. She is fluent in English, French and Hebrew. Borsuk holds a B.A. in English from the University of California Los Angeles, an M.A. in English Literature from the University of Southern California, and Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Southern California. Her work includes poetry, artist books, and collaborative digital projects, and she has a special interest in investigating textual materiality. Borsuk was a in the Humanities at MIT. She is married to developer .

''Whispering Galleries''

by and is a 2014 site-specific, interactive, multimedia poetry project that uses a reader’s gestures to transform a local diary into erasure poetry on the screen. As readers gesture over the computer, transcriptions from a diary dissolve as so much digital dust, leaving behind a poem. Through a webcam, the participant’s shadow emerges behind the words, creating a symbolic link between the viewer and the work.
Whispering Galleries was commissioned by Site Projects, a nonprofit that supports artistic works. The project was also supported by The New Haven Free Public Library and the Arts Council of Greater New Haven. Originally displayed at the on April 26, 2014, it later went on to be exhibited at in New Haven, at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, and ” at the Paul Watkins Gallery, Winona State University. It is available online. For the full experience, a Chrome browser, a , and a webcam are required.

Prizes