Meet Architect and Poet Nora Wendl - Jack Straw Writer 2011

The Farnsworth House in Fall

Nora Wendl's poems on the life of Dr. Edith Farnsworth are in a word: evocative. The Farnsworth House is a house of glass in Plaino, Illinois. Nora Wendl is a poet and architect in Portland, Oregon. Listen to her poems made of steel and glass. A beautiful series from the reading at Jack Straw.

Architecture of Poetry

Nora WendlThrough her study of a Mies van der Rohe glass house in Illinois, architect and poet Nora Wendl illuminates the life of Dr. Edith Farnsworth. Yearly visits to the home and extensive research inform Wendl’s portrayal of the house and the character of Farnsworth. With an architectural lens, Wendl brings life and sentiment to marble floors and glass walls.
Wendl is a writer and professor of architecture whose work (built and written) is influenced by the processes, products, history and discourse of the (silent) built and made things around us—particularly architecture. A native of Nebraska, she studied at Iowa State University and was 2005 Pearl Hogrefe Fellow in Creative Writing. She lives in Portland, Oregon and teaches at Portland State University Department of Architecture.
SoundPages was produced by Jack Straw Productions as part of the Jack Straw Writers Program. All of the writers heard in this series are published in the Jack Straw Writers Anthology, and featured online at http://www.jackstraw.org/.
Music performed by the St. Helens String Quartet and recorded as part of the Jack Straw Artist Support Program.

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