TWO POEMS BY MA|DE

MA|DE is a collective gesture, a unity of two voices fused into a poetic third. It is the name given to the joint authorship of Toronto-based creators Mark Laliberte and Jade Wallace,artists whose active solo practices differ quite radically from one another. MA|DE’s collaborative writing formalizes a process that began as an extended conversation between two people newly discovering one another. Over a number of months, the pair messaged, texted, emailed, telephoned, conversed in person, left links on social media for the other to find, and mailed letters; their long, exploratory conversations opened up a language-space all their own. MA|DE is currently working on their first full-length collection of poetry, which formulates a set of shared visions, symbols, and ciphers that invites the reader into their complex, continually expanding internal universe.

Poems currently appearing in Poetry is Dead and PRISM international(we were also recently interviewed by the editor of PRISM about our collaborative writing process, which can be accessed at http://prismmagazine.ca/2018/10/23/issue-57-1-teaser-behind-made/);forthcoming works in Rat’s Ass Review. Debut chapbook, Test Centre, to be released in 2019 by ZED Press.

Mark Laliberte (b. Windsor, ON) is an interdisciplinary artist with an MFA from the University of Guelph. He curates the online experimental comics site 4panel.ca, is designer and editor of the eclectic hybrid art/lit mag CAROUSEL, and lives in Toronto, Canada. Recent chapbooks include Free For the Taking(a collaborative book project with artist Micah Lexier, published by Warby Parker); and, asemantic asymmetry(a riso-printed remixing of selected derek beaulieu’s letra set works, published by Anstruther Press). Laliberte is currently working on two full-sized comic-poetry manuscripts, BalloonCloudBubble and BLKBK.

Jade Wallace is a writer from the Niagara Fruit Belt whose short fiction, poetry, and essays have been published internationally in The Antigonish Review, The Dalhousie Review,The Stockholm Review, Phenomenal Literature, The Town Crier, Pac’n Heat: A Noir Homage To Ms. Pac-Man from AGP Books, and elsewhere. Their latest chapbook is Rituals of Parsing (Anstruther Press, 2018). Wallace works in law in Toronto, Canada, and plays ukulele in The Leafy Greens, a band that has been incorrectly described as “psychedelic stoner metal.”