My work as a scholar and poet is united by a focus on textual materiality—from the surface of the page to the surface of language. My poetry is highly attuned to the texture of words, their resonances and slippages, often drawing on etymology and language play. I rely on collaboration to supplement my individual writing practice and keep me connected to a larger writing world. My collaborative projects include a collaborative translation, with Gabriela Jauregui, of Oulipo poet Paul Braffort, a performance/interactive book hybrid, created with Kate Durbin and Ian Hatcher, a book-length erased diary compposed with Andy Fitch, and several digital interactive works created with Nick Montfort, Jesper Juul, and Brad Bouse. I am especially interested in expanded notions of poetics, and have collaborated with artists Carrie Bodle and Julie Wills on sound-based poetry installation works that invite readers to let language wash over them.

As a poet and scholar whose work spans print and digital media, I have long been interested in the ways the technology of the book influences both reading and writing. My most recent publication, The Book, published in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, is concise volume on the book's changing technologies that bridges book history, artists' books, and electronic literature. At a moment when the dual subjects of the death of the book and the future of books (two halves of the same debate) have taken hold of popular interest, this volume seeks to divert those misplaced anxieties by illustrating the myriad ways the book's form and content have historically transformed one another and will likely continue to do so in the years to come. Encompassing a brief introduction to the book’s history along with speculations about its future, I examine the transformation of text’s material supports, particularly via the experimentation of book artists in the twentieth century, as innovative engagements with the book that suggest a way forward for the printed word, broadening the popular definition of what books are and how they function not only on our bookshelves, but in the contemporary imagination. This research was greatly facilitated by a Worthington Innovation Fellowship during the 2016-2017 academic year. As a companion to the book, I launched a public project in June of 2018 to crowdsource definitions of the book from scholars, poets, book artists, librarians, and publishers in the interest of expanding and deepening our understanding of what books can be and do. Those definitions appear at t-h-e-b-o-o-k.com.

Selected Publications

Books and Chapbooks

The Book, MIT Press. 2018.

Pomegranate Eater, Kore Press. 2016

Abra, in collaboration with Kate Durbin. 1913 Press. 2016.

As We Know, in collaboration with Andy Fitch. Subito Press. 2014.

Handiwork, Slope Editions. 2012.

Between Page and Screen, in collaboration with Brad Bouse. SpringGun Press. 2016.

Tonal Saw, The Song Cave. 2010.

Essays

Borsuk, Amaranth. “Between Page and Screen.” #WomenTechLit. Ed. María Mencia (West Virginia: West Virginia University Press, 2017), pp. 165–176.

Borsuk, Amaranth, Kate Durbin, and Ian Hatcher. “Abra: Expanding Artists’ Books Into the Digital Realm.” Gramma: Journal of Theory and Criticism 22, “Digital Literary Production and the Humanities,” Tatiani Rapatzikou and Philip Leonard, Eds. Winter, 2017.

Borsuk, Amaranth. “Abra: The Kinetic Page.” Bellingham Review 73 (Fall, 2016).

Borsuk, Amaranth, Nick Montfort, and Jesper Juul. “Opening a Worl in the World Wide Web: The Aesthetics and Poetics of Deletionism.” Media-N 11.1, Special Issue: The Aesthetics of Erasure.” Paul Benzon and Sarah Sweeney, Eds. (Spring 2015).

Borsuk, Amaranth. “Towards an Auto-Destructive Poetics.” The Force of What's Possible: Writers on Accessibility & The Avant-Garde. Lily Hoang and Joshua Marie Wilkinson, Eds. (Nightboat Books, 2015).

Borsuk, Amaranth, and Brad Bouse. “Encoded Messages Between Page and Screen.” ENTER+ | Creative Manual for Repurposing in Electronic Literature. María Mencía and Zuzana Husarova, Eds. (Dive Buki: Košice, Slovakia, 2014).

Borsuk, Amaranth. “Afterword,” Sixty Morning Talks by Andy Fitch. Ugly Duckling Presse, 2014.

Public Scholarship

Borsuk, Amaranth. t-h-e-b-o-o-k.com: Crowdsourcing a definition of the book. June 2018-present. Web.

Borsuk, Amaranth. “Deleting the Deletionists.” Media Commons / In Media Res. (Nov. 27, 2017). Web.

Borsuk, Amaranth, micha cárdenas, Sarah Dowling, and Allison Morton, Activist Poetics Video Archive. Web.

Borsuk, Amaranth, Sarah Dowling, et. al. Affect & Audience in the Digital Age: TranslationalPoetics (e-book, Essay Press, Jan. 2017). 

Borsuk, Amaranth, Sarah Dowling, et. al. Affect & Audience in the Digital Age, (e-book, Essay Press, January 2015). 

Borsuk, Amaranth, Sally Ball, and Michael Simeone. “Creative Practices.” Sprint Beyond the Book vol.2: Knowledge Systems. (Arizona State University and Intel Corporation, January 2014). 

Borsuk, Amaranth. “Artists’Books in the Age of Digital Publishing.” Commentary, Jacket2 (August – December 2013).