Two Southwests Project

Two Southwests is the brainchild of poet/translator, Steven Schroeder. By combining the poetic experiences of two southwests—southwest USA (Texas) and southwest China (Yunnan province)— project explores the vast terrain explored here as “Lost in Translation.”

Three excerpts from Two Southwests project brochure: “Be objective stands in for objectify.

But we are convinced that we see and know most fully what touches us most deeply. And, whatever else you may say about touching and being touched deeply, it is, indisputably, a matter of bodies coming into contact. It is a matter of collision—who meets whom how where when.”

“This project, by bringing oets and other artists together in two places similarly named by virtue of their respective places on somebody else’s maps, is intended to facilitate a collision. And the shape it takes is a matter of chance encounters as well as of circles of friends.”

“This between is worth exploring—especially as it connects to the collisions of bodies that give us an experience of touching and being touched. Our hope is that the betweeness will be illuminated by setting images side-by-side; between the pictures we may hear silence; between the poems and between the lines nothing that is there may make our being present a bit more possible.”

Two Southwests Reading in Bee Cave, TX
Photo credits: Natasha Marin, 2008.