Keith S. Wilson is a game designer, an Affrilachian Poet, and a Cave Canem fellow. He is a recipient of an NEA Fellowship, an Elizabeth George Foundation Grant, and an Illinois Arts Council Agency Award, and has received both a Kenyon Review Fellowship and a Stegner Fellowship. Additionally, he has received fellowships or grants from Bread Loaf, Tin House, the MacDowell Colony, Vermont Studio Center, UCross, the Millay Colony, and James Merrill House, among others. Keith was a Gregory Djanikian Scholar, and his poetry has won the Rumi Prize and been anthologized in Best New Poets and Best of the Net. His book, Fieldnotes on Ordinary Love (Copper Canyon), was recognized by the New York Times as a best new book of poetry.
;; re(context) ;; is a series of interactive texts (a digital chapbook) first created through a digital fellowship with Laboratory Spokane. Each piece investigates the fluidity of language—how, like water, language fills its container. And how we, as the keepers of language, cannot help but contextualize it through our physical experiences, even despite the ostensibly disembodied act of being online.
2020
digital multimedia
This multimedia piece draws from an API database of racist jokes—when a user interacts with the piece, a “setup” appears, moving sporadically about the canvas until it settles and “dries.” However, these racist jokes are always absent their punchline, foregrounding how menacing these questions are when they are not allowed the laughter that lets the joke teller off the hook. This piece works both as a timed “video” or can be interacted with. Every time the user clicks (taps the screen, “knocks”) a joke will appear.