Finding Texture and Moving Beyond Words
An Interview with TSW’s 2023-2024 Artist in Residence Sanna Wani
Interview by Joyce Chen, TSW executive director
One of the great joys of the work we do at The Seventh Wave is how relational it is. Whether it’s our call formation process, which involves several past contributors combining brains to ask questions for future contributors to respond to, or our Community Anthologies, a cohort-based storytelling program that teaches aspiring editors-in-chief how to curate and edit their own mini-issues, we’re always looking for ways to encourage dialogue and collaboration among folks who might not otherwise cross paths.
Our Artist in Residence program is no different. Each Artist in Residence brings their own unique skillset and perspective to the organization for a two-year tenure, during which they interact with our contributors’ work to create original art inspired by the topic du jour. Our Artist in Residence for 2023-2024 is the singular poet, organizer, and all-around delightful human being, Sanna Wani, author of My Grief, The Sun (House of Anansi, 2022). She has brought immense warmth and curiosity to the role, digging deep into the work of our Issue 16: Proximities spring cohort to find resonant threads, turning their words into stunning greeting cards meant to encourage exchange and relation-building.
It was a joy to work with Sanna on conceptualizing her project at the start of 2023, and to watch the process unfold organically over the course of the year. You can read more about her insightful approach to the project below, and head over to our online store to purchase one of the limited edition card sets.
Joyce Chen: We’ve structured the Artist in Residence role as one that takes our contributors’ pieces and alchemizes them into original artworks that can take the form of visual art, audio experiments, or otherwise. What were your hopes in joining the team in this capacity, and what excited you most about this process?
Sanna Wani: When I joined the team, I hoped to learn from and embody TSW’s spirit of community. I’ve so often been fascinated and inspired by the way The Seventh Wave turns certain things about writing and publishing on its head, to move really in the spirit of publishing people not pieces. I wanted to be part of that ethic, that practice. I was so excited to challenge myself to tune into this disposition. It was exciting to think of what it meant to be an artist among people, in residence, rather than an artist on my own.
Joyce: In the earlier phases of our conversations, we spoke a lot about the possibility of audio, of perhaps having you conduct brief interviews with our contributors as a way to dig into their work and their processes together. That original idea obviously morphed quite a bit to become what we’re excited to share now, which is collage and text-based cards. Could you share a bit about how that initial idea evolved and changed over time?
Sanna: I think another thing about TSW that was so exciting was the space to be curious. I had a lot of different directions I was excited to explore. I think what really ended up forming the direction was your encouragement, Joyce, to be brave. I’m not a visual artist. Audio would have been a slightly easier lateral move, because I like interviewing people and the medium of conversation. My wheelhouse and my comfort is very much with words, written or spoken and meaning. But earlier in the year I was experimenting with collage, with paint. I wanted to know what visual practices felt like. And so we tried a few different things (manual collage, digital collage) and I felt a few things fail until I found (or re-found more) concrete poetry and realized this was the avenue through which the desire for an image and my skills with language could go hand in hand to create something worthy of the contributors’ work.
I’ve so often been fascinated and inspired by the way The Seventh Wave turns certain things about writing and publishing on its head, to move really in the spirit of publishing people not pieces. I wanted to be part of that ethic, that practice.
Joyce: As part of your process, you shared a brief survey with our contributors to get a better feel for their own interpretation of their pieces — what colors and songs they might associate with their pieces, what sorts of textures or feelings they wanted to elicit in their readers. What was your hope in sending along that survey to the contributors?
Sanna: I think in moving towards the visual, there’s a lot more to do with how one interprets a piece and understands it beyond logic. The feelings and textures of the piece really arise and are guiding the process more than any logical understanding. It was important for me to pair my own interpretations with as much knowledge as the primary interpreter’s — the writer’s — to create something in tune with itself. I don’t believe in that whole thing about every interpretation is equal, the art divorced from the artist, blah blah blah… pieces come from places. From people. Before I paint it with the pictures, smells, memories and textures of my own life, I want to understand the worlds it comes from. I want to get as close to experiencing it as the creator experienced it before I take it somewhere else.
Joyce: How does the interplay between text and image surface in your own work? Did you find yourself discovering anything new about that relationship in the process of creating these particular collages?
Sanna: I think to answer this question, it’s important for me to share that all the photographs paired with the texts here are my own. I have two film cameras, which I acquired around 2018 and which I played with for a few years. Then the dust of a new hobby settled, and I had all these photos, heartfelt photos, that I wasn’t sure what to do with. I just put them in a photo album, thinking they were a nice keepsake and maybe I could figure out some project to fit them into someday. And this was the project I was waiting for.
Like I said about the survey, each of those photos inhabited a place, a smell, a texture. It was a really wonderful, rich exercise to read each of the writer’s pieces and their answers to the survey and then kind of compare notes on my own feelings about each photo to find the perfect match. I learned how much of text is image and how much of image is encoded with text. Meaning, meaning hanging in layers behind them both. It flexed a good muscle, to sift through meaning like this and find matching threads. As a poet, especially, it felt like understanding again how poetry is not about the words but what is beyond them; not about the sunset or the sand, but the feeling behind it.
Before I paint [a piece] with the pictures, smells, memories and textures of my own life, I want to understand the worlds it comes from. I want to get as close to experiencing it as the creator experienced it before I take it somewhere else.
Joyce: What is your hope with the release of these cards out into the world; how do you see your art interacting with the contributors’ work, with readers’ experience of the pieces, with this idea of “proximities” that was at the crux of Issue 16?
Sanna: Honestly, I just hope the contributors like it! I tried my best to sink as close to their words as I could and I hope the photos resonate with their own understanding of their work. I hope it makes them feel seen. I also hope that the cards might land someday with someone who has no idea about The Seventh Wave or the contributors at all — and they are led back to the issue, and are moved in some way to connect with one of us or all of us. Or are just moved at all! I think that’s what proximities means to me, this interaction between all of us. The reader, the artist, the writer, the publisher. The tides that are tugging on all of us, that move feelings between us and allow us to experience things in a new way. Which proximities allow what? I hope these cards become like a prism through which the proximities between us become more apparent, like a forcefield brought to light or a new lens clarifying.
As a poet, especially, it felt like understanding again how poetry is not about the words but what is beyond them; not about the sunset or the sand, but the feeling behind it.
