Counterpath, paperback
Publication Date: March 15, 2025
Publisher Marketing:
“Rudely wrecks the sentence to make way for ‘character.’” – Ronaldo V. Wilson
“This devastation belongs to us.” – Valerie Hsiung
abalone is a poetry performance, object, and chapbook, part of Bo Hwang’s Nightlaps, an emerging poetry collection, and Dross, a series of objects and performances. Day by day, one makes of a broken wall a place to stand. That is how to cross the rubble, call a friend, kill time. Far from straightforward, makeshift passages interrupt their own way, run out of breadth, lose vision. What I don’t have time to tell you becomes physical and what is physical will bear the load. It has to.
Dross is a “rubble” series that works with excess and opacity. Dross objects are soft materials turned to husk. Made for performance, dross objects are incidental and not made to last. And yet, light and cheap, easy to carry, the objects keep on. What is uncontained, ephemeral and extraneous makes a thing of itself, and it can’t be looked into.
Bo Hwang is an artist and writer working with poetry, movement, and stories. Her work leans surreal and explores mundane dross, mongrels, and other tropical fecundity. She taught movement workshops at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics where she was the 2022 Anselm Hollo Fellow and has performed across The Front Range. Her essay work, Squat Practice, was a Finalist for the 2024 Essay Press Chapbook Contest. She was born in the U.S. and raised in Indonesia.
