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Bruce Rice Writer
The Vivian Poems
Poems by Bruce Rice inspired by street photographer Vivian Maier.
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Vivian Maier was a self-taught street photographer who created a legacy of over 135,000 photographs and negatives discovered in a storage auction. Much of this was done while working for well-to-do families in Chicago. Maier died in poverty in 2009 and saw nothing of the books, documentary films and over sixty international exhibits of her work.
Maier was one of the few women street photographers of her time. She photographed what moved her: Blind Arvella Gray at the Maxwell Street bazaar, a woman clutching her fur coat in a moment of indecision, Vivian's bike propped up in a patch of light after the rain. These poems are a kind of translation of the images as she peels back the layers of the American Dream. They find more compassion than she is often given credit for. And perhaps more humanity too.
What I Know About Vivian Maier
Enjoy some favourite poems - Vivian taking on that professor who called her accent "an affectation", and poems riffing on her Super 8 films. The essay was written after completing the manuscript. It is a response and alternate reading Maier's story and the work itself. As for the 'mystery of Vivian' it often feels like some obvious interpretations are missed. Check out the video from Vivian on the dreadful year 1968 with the killing of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, and the disastrous Chicago Democratic Convention. It was posted after the killing of George Floyd, when I was Saskatchewan Poet Laureate.
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