Karen Trask
David Jhave Johnston

Inside-out Poems
09.06–10.12.2024

Inside-out Poems is an audio project initiated by Karen Trask with the collaboration of David Jhave Johnston. It began with Karen emailing a poem to Jhave who had suggested acting as a witness to her process. He replied with a poem that echoed and inverted the words, sense and rhythm. This began a daily exchange that was spontaneous and playful. Currently, there are over 200 poems exchanged. Karen is the lead, Jhave is the echo.

They recorded themselves reading a selection of the poems to produce this audio work. The poems are discrete compact reflections of events big and small. The final editing of the poetry readings by Trask reflects the idea-echo form of the process and how differences and similarities accentuate the call and response of thought. All ideas are reverberations. Their voices mingle.

Karen Trask would like to thank David Jhave Johnston for embracing this project with so much enthusiasm. She would also like to thank Paul Litherland, her devoted and rigorous poetry corrector.