Poetry Making with Archival Material

L. Renée was awarded the 2026 Mountain Artist in Residencyat West Virginia University Libraries. The residency is a collaborative program between WVU Art in the Libraries and the West Virginia and Regional History Center that was made possible by the Appalachian Community Development Association and The Oakland Foundation. 

Through this grant funding, L. Renée traveled to Morgantown, West Virginia and researched more than 600 pages of environmental, geological and community archives on mountaintop removal coal mining at the West Virginia and Regional History Center. Her culminating project, “Remain,” is an interdisciplinary poetry and performance exhibit that probes a vital question: after a mountain is stripped, blasted, displaced, and “reclaimed,” what truly remains? 

L. Renée explored various poetic forms made from newspaper articles, letters, photographs, and documents to best capture her research findings, including erasure, contrapuntal, ekphrastic, and found poetry. She recorded her artistic process while in residency at UCROSS in Wyoming. Click here to see the video