Meredith Bergmann – String Poet

Recently I was struck by how long I have been experimenting with the combination of living things with airplanes, from the first small bronze sculpture I ever made to my most recently unveiled larger-than-life memorial. I didn’t intentionally return to this theme. I know this happens to poets and musicians, too.

First Lesson — First Lesson, 1976, bronze, wood, 5.5″ x 3.5″ x 2.5″

Rolling Home — Rolling Home, 1977, bronze, 12″ x 6″ x 6”

Plane Tree — Plane Tree, 1979, fabric, wire, stuffing, 40” x 36” x 24”, photo credit: Paul Warchol

Reclining Figure — Reclining Figure, 1979, fabric, foam, stuffing, zipper, 10″ x 48″ x 36”, photo credit: Paul Warchol

September 11th (detail) — September 11th (detail), 2001, bronze, 18” x 10” x 12”. photo credit: Michael Bergmann

September 11th: A Memorial for the Cathedral of St. John the Divine — September 11th: A Memorial for the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, 2012, bronze, 39″ x 24” x 20”, photo credit: Michael Bergmann

September 11th: A Memorial for the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, 2012 — September 11th: A Memorial for the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, 2012, 78” x 22” x 30” (bronze: 39” height), bronze, steel, glass and fragments from the rubble of the World Trade Towers, photo credit: Michael Bergmann

September 11th: A Memorial for the Cathedral of St. John the Divine (detail) — September 11th: A Memorial for the Cathedral of St. John the Divine (detail), 2012, 78” x 22” x 30” (bronze: 39” height), bronze, steel, glass and fragments from the rubble of the World Trade Towers, photo credit: Michael Bergmann

Meredith Bergmann has been making sculpture for 38 years. Her public commissions include the Boston Women’s Memorial, the Labor Memorial for the Massachusetts State House, and the September 11th Memorial for NYC’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine. She is currently working on the FDR Hope Memorial for Roosevelt Island, NYC. She is poetry editor of the American Arts Quarterly. Her poetry and criticism have appeared in Barrow Street, Contemporary Poetry Review, The Hudson Review, The New Criterion, The Same and the anthology Hot Sonnets; and online at Lavender Review, Light, Mezzo Cammin, Per Contra, and Umbrella. Her poem “The Bird in the Bathroom” won an honorable mention from the Frost Farm Poetry Prize in 2013. Her chapbook, A Special Education, has just been published by Exot Books.