Whiskey Radish

Artemis#

Boogie#

Cucumber#

Artist’s Statement#

The poems submitted here are in a style called nDada. nDada is a combination of an unconventional, perhaps absurd, cartoon, and a poem or prose poem. The two are entirely unrelated, and often come together by pure, surrealist, chance. The cartoon interrupts the poem in the middle of it, serving as an unexpected element of surprise. The materials are simply type (digital or physical), paper, and ink. The cartoons and poems are the result of daily quick, improvisational, moments of inspiration. Carpe diem!

About the Artist#

Constance Lane, nom de plume Whiskey Radish, was educated in French literature at Barnard College, Columbia University, during the raucous punk era of the later ’70s; her honors thesis was on Rimbaud. She now owns and runs a small art school in Lexington, Massachussetts. For seventeen years, on Friday nights, she worked as a bouncer at the famed Ryles Jazz Club in Cambridge, Massachussetts, where she was surrounded by jazz improvisation, something elemental to her style.

Her work can also be found, among other places, at the Grolier Poetry Bookshop and The Woodberry Poetry Room, both in Cambridge, Massachussetts. She is currently working on an anthology of nDada poetry with G. C. Meinzer, thanks to a grant from Barnard College, Columbia University. For this, they are collecting nDada poems from college students around the country and beyond, and also from all others who are willing and curious. See nDadaPublic.org for more on that project.

Ms. Radish was recently part of a panel led by poet Carolyn Hembree on Humor in Womans’ Poetry at the 2024 New Orleans Poetry Festival, where she also gave a workshop on nDada poetry.