Concert pianist and poet Oni Buchanan performs on campus, conducts kinetic poetry workshop

By: David Hampton

Posted: 4/8/08

A published poet and concert pianist held a workshop with English students the day following her piano concert.

Oni Buchanan, currently touring the eastern U.S. for a series of piano performances, poetry workshops and readings, visited UT Martin to perform in a piano concert for the university's guest artist series and to conduct a kinetic poetry workshop.

Buchanan, author of "What Animal," an acclaimed book of poetry released in 2003, is currently promoting her upcoming book "Spring," which will be published in August by the University of Illinois Press.

Kinetic poetry, as Buchanan explained at the workshop, is a form that involves energy and movement, in which the words fluctuate and are in motion.

"I didn't look to anybody else's poetry for form," Buchanan said of her kinetic style.

She did say, though, that her interest in cryptography, the study of coded writing, influenced her poems, along with her love of puzzles.

In an example Buchanan presented during the workshop, she led those in attendance through a Flash-animated version of her poem "The Mandrake Vehicles," which can be found on her Web site.

The poem evolves in phases, and begins with three blocks of verse with no punctuation. As the work progresses, the "light" letters float up from the text, leaving the scattered remains of the poem.

After this, the remaining letters condense into a new "secret" poem. Once again, the "medium" letters rise and leave only the "heavy" letters to form a final, shorter "secret" poem.

She describes this style of poetry as very work-intensive and time consuming, but says that she enjoys how writing in strict forms leads the writer to words and phrases that would not have immediately occurred otherwise.

Buchanan credits her introduction to the arts largely to her father, who was an orthopedic surgeon by trade but an amateur pianist in his spare time.

Her current piano performances focus on the relationship between music and poetry, although she has not set any of her own poetry to music.

One of Buchanan's projects currently in development is a video game set in the style of early 80s computer games that leads the player through a problem-solving mystery adventure.

Her game entitled "Moths Drink the Tears" will lead the player through a castle in an attempt to progress by solving mysteries. The game's title was inspired by a species of moth indigenous to Madagascar that feeds from the eyes of sleeping birds.

The original twist in Buchanan's game is that the player will accumulate lines of poetry when advancing in the game and will be challenged with determining the correct order of the lines in the finished poem.

She also plans to commission a composer to accompany each individual line of poetry with music.

Buchanan said that she wasn't sure if anyone has developed a game on this scale that focuses on interactivity and art.

She also believes her game could potentially have a wide audience, in that the level of difficulty is initially less demanding and increases to a point that she believes would be fitting for graduate students.

Buchanan is a graduate of the University of Virginia, where she double-majored in English and music. She then attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she earned her MFA in poetry while also studying piano.

Once finished in Iowa, Buchanan moved to Boston, where she earned her master's degree in piano performance from the New England Conservatory of Music.

Buchanan's current tour began in early March in New York. She is now in the process of visiting universities and colleges across the Southeast and in May will make appearances in Pennsylvania.

After that, Buchanan will conclude her spring tour with three performances in Brazil.
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On the Net:
www.onibuchanan.com