Karin de Weille — Apophatic Art Practice and Research

Undone (spoken words)

I write poems when I want to be undone. I want the words to lead me to an edge where I’m in relation to what lies beyond me and my comprehension. I crave the feeling of reality I get when I’m hovering on that threshold. If something is conveyed, it’s usually in the silence between the words or after the words have stopped; only then is there space for what can’t be defined.

The words are for me a way of ushering in some greater reality, keeping it present, shimmering.

For the Apophatic art practice and research project, I wish to work on a project whose content is so alive and undefined, I’m still struggling to find the words and rhythms that might evoke it. It has to do with the passing of my mother and the intensified relation to life I have felt before and after. I feel driven to communicate it, precisely because it is so elusive, because I want its strange reality to be recognized. It would be easier to move on and let my psyche slip back into its ruts, my sense of life and death dominated by what is articulated in everyday conversation, that the two are simply opposites and mutually repellent, but something in me rebels. The thought of such a contraction of my consciousness—I won’t entertain it. I have written one poem so far, which I’ve recorded. There’s another in process where I explore what I can only call the soul. Who knows if that is what I experienced—the word by itself evokes nothing—but perhaps I can bring other words together so that in the spaces between them something may emerge which has no name but can be felt.

Karin de Weille, with a BA from Princeton, a PhD in literature from U of Toronto and an MFA from Sarah Lawrence, has taught literature at the U of T, New School, and John Jay College and writing workshops for Poets & Writers and Hugo House, among others. She has published essays on the craft of prose as well as poetry and presented at several academic conferences as well as literary. Her poetry has been published in various journals and anthologies. She has also performed her poetry, in collaboration with dancers, musicians and other artists, in several multi-media productions, most notably Watersines at St. Marks Cathedral in Seattle, as well as written and performed a solo show called This Body at Freehold Theater, a recording of which can be viewed here.

On her website can be found poems and recordings of poems as well as craft talks.

Karin likes to go to the edge of the ocean, where the ocean is everything she doesn’t know. Words take her there, and this is why she writes. She likes to take others to that edge and hover there and feel herself all the more vividly in their presence. This is why she performs. She likes to feel the world fresh against her skin, and this is why she keeps moving (all over the world)—and dancing! After years in academia, she has for several years been teaching under her own roof (currently in Seattle) under the sky.

The Wind, 2026, video poem.