POSTCARDS AND POEMS: WHO KNEW?
Words by Mallory Pace & photos provided by Clark Lunberry The year is 2020 and Clark Lunberry has been sitting around his house for
Around the same time, Lunberry was working on a different project for the
far too long. The pandemic is just beginning to put the world on pause as
UNF Art Gallery where he shredded various papers, including a copy of Mar-
Lunberry yearns for his life of teaching and traveling back. He stares at buck-
cel Proust’s 3,200-page Remembrance of Things Past, which left him with
ets of shredded paper from his favorite book and a box of postcards his late
buckets of tiny scrap paper. Some pieces were too shredded to make words
father left behind, over 750 that is. And almost by accident, he recalls, the two
out on, but others remained touched with one or two words, some incoherent,
fell together, perfectly in place. An accident that is now a published book of
some mysteriously beautiful. The combination of the two was accidental at
remarkable visual poetry — Seeking Frozen Sound.
first, but then became intentional as Lunberry started to see a vision for what it could become.
Before becoming an english professor at the University of North Florida 19 years ago, Lunberry spent years living and traveling around the world, cre-
“I had the postcards and I had the piles of shreddings… and it almost feels like
ating art, writing books and teaching English, all of which he still continues
it was an accident that one of the shreddings fell onto the postcard,” Lunber-
to do. After completing his undergraduate degree from Kansas University,
ry recalled. “And I thought oh, that’s kind of interesting. It was like a kind of
he spent time in Europe, then in New York City until he settled into Japan for
caption on a photograph, but inside of the photograph.”
eight years, where he taught English. He finds inspiration from becoming a part of other cultures, meeting new people and stumbling across a few happy
The excitement and satisfaction of finding the perfect words to fit on the right
accidents along the way. His most recent book, Seeking Frozen Sound, is a
photo was enough for him to keep going. But Rome wasn’t built in a day, and
product of one of those accident-turned-inspiration moments.
Lunberry knew this wasn’t a project meant to be rushed through. Instead, he would thumb through the postcards until he found one that was especially in-
Growing up in Kansas, Lunberry’s father was a small town jeweler, watchmak-
triguing in some way. He would leave the card on his desk, not so much just to
er and avid collector. He traveled to many places over his lifetime, collecting
look at, but to become part of his environment, Lunberry said. He quoted one
postcards along the way. They were all very connected to the places he went,
of his favorite critics, Susan Sontag, who once said, “If you wait long enough,
Lunberry said, but he didn’t really know what to do with them just sitting in a
every photograph becomes interesting.” The objective was to use singular
box. Until boredom struck one day and Lunberry began seeing the postcards
words or put together phrases to accompany the photograph and work along-
less as souvenirs and more as beautiful photography.
side it, rather than trying to dominate the image with words.
46 Folio Weekly
