“Ascend cliffs rising through the clouds. Wander the back alleys of Dublin. Skip moss-covered stones across a river tumbling from the frigid North Sea.” Sound like the summer vacation for you? With the intention of engaging in a creative experiment, Tara Labovich ’19 and fellow student Bryce Kirby ’19, spent the summer exploring those settings, Labovich in Ireland, Kirby in Scotland, trying to get lost in every sense of the word.
The project, to create and publish a book of photos and poetry that captures the experience, was inspired by questions about the creative process: “How will our perceptions of reality and creative expression, told through our poetry and photographs, change with the isolation and loneliness of the trail? In other words, how lost in place and self can we become? Can we represent our journeys in words and pixels?” ask Labovich and Kirby at the start of their project.
Those questions accompanied a video and website the students made to explain the project and request help in funding their travels. Labovich and Kirby each won separate Venture Grants to pursue their individual creative experiments; they joined forces after realizing they had parallel goals for their projects.
“We were doing separate projects, and both submitted different grants, unbeknownst to each other, and we realized we’re basically doing the same thing, so why not pull everything together?” says Labovich of how the two connected. So they did, writing poetry and taking photos, documenting their journeys and observations while getting lost.
“We want it to feel that when the reader’s looking at these poems and photos, they’re stepping into our experience and creating an experience of their own without having to actually get onto a plane,” Labovich says of her work. She says the locales, scenery, and time she devoted to the project during the summer helped her grow as a writer and as an individual.
“I definitely think it was some of the best writing I’ve done. It was interesting for me, because it was a shift — a lot of my poems before [the trip] focused on things I was feeling, and while I was over there, all of the things around me started to come alive. It was a new kind of inspiration.”
She says her travels helped make her more aware allowing her to devote time to just observe and write. “When I’m in a busy place, it can be over stimulating; in nature, there’s a lot more flexibility on the focus, the quiet, the scenery, there’s also a lot of mystery around it.”
It was also an opportunity for Labovich to travel on her own, find her own way, and solve her own problems throughout her month abroad.
“My family asked, ‘You’re not going alone, are you?’ and some of my extended family was concerned until I got back. But my mom’s family is Irish, and they were thrilled I was there. There were times when my lack of navigation skills was a challenge; there was no Wi-Fi access. It was the first time I was traveling when I didn’t have anyone else to rely on, to help find where I was. I built a lot of confidence in myself.”
The connection to her Irish heritage was also a special one for Labovich; she’d traveled to Ireland previously with her family and grandfather, and says she knew she would be back. Labovich is a creative writing major minoring in philosophy; she grew up in Germany, and has lived in Colorado for the past six years.
Her experience drafting poems for “Lost” is something she says will have a lasting effect on her growth as a writer. “This will be something to draw from, and it’s been such a good and changing experience that I think it’ll influence my writing for a very long time. As a writer, the project as a whole allowed me to learn a lot about self-motivation and when I work best (which is late at night and not convenient at all) and how I work both as a writer and as a person.”
Now, Labovich and Kirby have reconnected, going through all of the content, picking out the best and making it better, in preparation for self-publishing their book. “It’s challenging but also rewarding, because we have two different minds, different ideas, and that adds a little more variation,” Labovich says.
The final products are in the works: a book of poems will be completed in October, and a full book with poems and photography will be published at the end of the year. Catch a preview and place your order with The Isles Project.
