Organized by The Editors

Etel Adnan: Poetic Landscapes

On September 20, 2018, SFMOMA hosted “A Ballad for Etel Adnan,” an evening of poetry and music in conjunction with the exhibition New Work: Etel Adnan. Harpist and composer Zeena Parkins and percussionist William Winant performed, and David Buuck, Nick Hoff, and Denise Newman read their own poems along with some of Adnan’s writings. Born in Beiruit, Lebanon, in 1925, Adnan is a visual artist, poet, and essayist with deep ties to the Bay Area, where she lived for more than fifty years. New Work: Etel Adnan, which closed January 6, 2019, honored this relationship; the show, which included new paintings and tapestries, marked SFMOMA’s first presentation of the artist’s work, and coincided with the acquisition of two paintings by Adnan for the museum’s new Contemporary Art collection. Here, we offer three new and in-progress poems from “A Ballad for Etel Adnan.”

Series

Four poems from The Redesignation of Paradise

by Denise Newman

Four poems from <i>The Redesignation of Paradise</i>

Series

A Poem for Etel

by Nick Hoff

Series

A Ballad for Etel (Excerpts)

by David Buuck

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