In 2021 CAROUSEL started an international chain of response poems.
Poems are often in conversation with other poems — from those that recreate or re-envision long-standing formal conventions, to those written “after” or “inspired by” poems that came before them. Here at CAROUSEL, we want to experiment with this tradition in a deliberate way, on a large scale, over time. We therefore bring you CHAIN, a global series of response poems — each connected to the one that came before it but also different enough to stand on its own and lead somewhere new. It starts with one poem — one link in the chain — and it gets built, link by link.
Every chain needs a first link … to get things started, CAROUSEL commissioned the fabulous Canadian writer Andy Verboom to create CHAIN 01, the first poetic link in this project. We chose Andy because of his long-standing interest in collaborative poetics, both as an author of chapbooks like Full Mondegreens with David Huebert, and as a publisher of the ekphrastic journal long con and the multi-authored-chapbook press Collusion Books.
Aug 2020 / ANDY VERBOOM (Halifax, NS / Canada) — Delusional Structures of the Inner Ear
Sep 2020 /ZACKARY MEDLIN (Salt Lake City, Utah / USA) — Tinnitus as a Form of Pareidolia
Oct 2020 /ROXANNA BENNETT (Whitby, ON / Canada) — Ménière’s Apophenia
Nov 2020 /KERRY RAWLINSON (Peachland, BC / Canada) — Lady Mondregreen
Dec 2020 /JEREMY COLANGELO (London, ON / Canada) — Foe Names
Jan 2021 /NATALIE WILKINSON (Montana / USA) — Trundlesung
Feb 2021 / GRAEME BEZANSON (France) — Virgin of the Rocks
(Mar 2021) CHRIS TOMPKINS (Dartmouth, NS / Canada) — Hibernate, Sweet Ghostess