A durational performance

In this latest performance of Subject Index, Iain Morrison will read aloud from Emily Dickinson’s work, wearing a simulacrum of her iconic white dress. Audience members and onlookers are welcome to come and eavesdrop as they please, while Morrison maps his own subjective index of Dickinson’s poems in a spreading nest of scribbled paper. Thomas H. Johnson’s 1955 Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson contains a fascinating subject index that aims to help readers find half-remembered poems via loose keyword categorization. This quixotic attempt to systematize and filter the poems inspired Morrison to subject himself to be ‘read’ by these poems first over a week-long event in an abandoned Edinburgh office building in 2013, and then again in a Berlin subway station in 2014. In these and in each subsequent environment where he has performed this work, Morrison has echoed the myths of Dickinson’s elective seclusion, playing with concealment and partial reveals in improvised domestic-within-public spaces.

About the Poet:

Iain Morrison is a poet based in Edinburgh, Scotland where he is part of Fruitmarket art centre’s curatorial team. His collection I’m a Pretty Circler was shortlisted for the Saltire Poetry Prize in 2019. He was ArtfulScribe writer-in-residence at University of Southampton throughout 2018. Performances include an award-winning night of drag queen poetry at the Scottish Poetry Library, and with Leiza McLeod a sung staging of women’s writing from the Beat Generation given at Bristol Poetry Festival. Iain studied music at the University of Cambridge and his practice moves between artforms, often ending up in a gallery.