From Everywhere We Are is the Farthest Place, performed live at Epsilon Spires, Brattleboro VT, July 2024. Photo: Perri Lynch Howard
Mary Edwards: Everywhere We Are is the Farthest Place
October 16, November 13 & December 11
Jefferson Market Library / New York Public Library
All Performances at 6pm. Free and Open to the Public.
Polarlit is a literary magazine founded in 2023 in Longyearbyen, Svalbard. At 78° latitude, it is the northernmost literary magazine in the world. Everywhere We Are is the Farthest Place is included in the premiere issue that includes all literary forms and in all languages by anyone who has been touched by this unique place in the Arctic Circle.
“I expect Mama Jewel to regale me with stories of how she enjoyed a tea from a Corning Centura Pyroceram cup, or perhaps an Orange Crush soda pop in one of those beveled glass bottles that are now collector's items. Instead, I learn that before this evening, my mother never saw the interior of the Jim Crow-era Greyhound bus station until it was converted into a dining establishment seventy years later. “
from The Grey Area, essay and audio by Mary Edwards
Everywhere We Are is the Farthest Place is a soundtrack/score for the transforming Arctic landscape.
Conscient is a podcast that deeply explores conversations about the ecological crisis with brilliant, passionate, and visionary artists and cultural workers on the theme of 'preparing for the end of the world as we know it and creating the conditions for other possible worlds to emerge. Mary Edwards talks with host Claude Schryer t about her Arctic soundscape composition, Everywhere We Are is the Farthest Place.
On A Touch of Grace, Mary Edwards joins Glenn Grace to discuss Composing environmental sound.
The Wa(l)king Pattern Revisited included in the Joy Has a Sound anthology of Black art, poetry, prose, scores, scripts and silences, is a poetic adaptation of a soundscape, The Wa(l)king Pattern, also written as an ode to Mary’s mother, Jewel Edwards. During her youth in the 1940s American South—in a bold quest to pursue her education in the face of the Jim Crow Laws—she cultivated an environmental stewardship and deep listening practice during her resolute 4am daily walk part of the way to school as she navigated the natural world.
Joy Has a Sound is a poly-vocal, visually stunning answer to the question, What are the sounds of community and how they are handed down? A home for Black art and culture in Seattle’s Central District, with this anthology The 3rd Thing and Wa Na Wari make a home for the essays, poetry, scores, scripts and silences of the Black poets, musicians, artists and scholars assembled by editors Rachel Kessler and Elisheba Johnson to wonder about the time-traveling, place-making power of sound. It includes “The Wa(l)king Pattern Revisited," by Mary Edwards, a poetic adaptation of a soundscape written as a "living history" ode to her mother, Jewel Edwards. During her youth in the 1940s American South—in a bold quest to pursue her education in the face of the Jim Crow Laws—she cultivated an environmental stewardship and deep listening practice during her resolute 4am daily walk part of the way to school as she navigated the natural world.
UPCOMING DATES
NOV 13 THE JEFFERSON MARKET LIBRARY | NYPL
DEC 7 ROCKWOOD MUSIC HALL, NY
DEC 11 THE JEFFERSON MARKET LIBRARY | NYPL
FEB 14 THE CHURCH, SAG HARBOR, NY