VOLATILE! A POETRY AND SCENT EXHIBITION

by: Elena Vosnaki

How many times have you wished that your favorite poem or novel would be "translated" into an olfactory medium? Not just the smell of paper and leather, which has already been done by niche perfumery, but the invoked world? 

 

How would it feel if verse was transported into a specific fragrance for a little daydreaming inspired by the images and feelings invoked by the language itself? 

 

 

 

 

The December issue of Poetry magazine, the oldest monthly devoted to verse in the English-speaking world, has asked the perfumers D.S. & Durga to translate Jeffrey Skinner’s poem, “The Bookshelf of the God of Infinite Space,” into a custom scent, available to subscribers.  The scent will be microencapsulated onto an insert in the magazine. 

 

 

 

 DS & Durga: David Seth Moltz (DS) and Kavi Moltz (Durga). 

 

 

“Great art is a keyhole that we peek through, opening onto larger, collective spaces,” says David Moltz, the genius behind the Brooklyn-based perfumerie. “Poetry and perfume both utilize the power of suggestion and are capable of creating entire worlds through subtle illusion.”

 

Please note that the scented edition of Poetry magazine will only be available to subscribers if they subscribe before October 23. Interested readers may subscribe here: http://bit.ly/1hoj5Z3

 

In tandem with Poetry magazine’s December issue, the poetry and scent exhibition Volatile! will open at The Poetry Foundation on December 11 and run through February 19.

 

 

VOLATILE! A POETRY AND SCENT EXHIBITION

What if every poem had its own fragrance, beyond the literal smell of the materiality of the page? What if one could smell the poet’s imaginative, conceptual, intellectual world, the text unfurling into an aroma? In Volatile!, design historian Debra Riley Parr presents a number of objects and experiences that invite speculative connections between poetry and scent. The opening reception for the Volatile! exhibition will be December 11, at 6:30 p.m.