The BeltLine Chronicles

Love, friendship, and poetry on the at

George the poet, carrying around an extract of the The BeltLine Chronicles on the

The BeltLine Chronicles near Kroger, on the Atlanta

An excerpt of The BeltLine Chronicles near Ponce City Market on the

The BeltLine Chronicles on the Eastside Beltline

Ismail ibn Conner playin the role of George at Constellations ATL

Ismail ibn Conner as "George"

George the poet's bike, taking a break from the quest....

Don't miss this art event specifically for ATLiens. Robert Barsky has encapsulated the experience of the Atlanta BeltLine in 'The BeltLine Chronicles,' a 68-page poem honoring the living spaces all along the famous pathway.

On September 23, experience a reading of the Atlanta epic at Constellations, 135 Auburn Avenue. Ismail ibn Conner will represent “George,” the fictional poet who wanders around the entire BeltLine, recounting his adventures and recalling epic literary voyages from Homer all the way to Toni Morrison.

Admission is FREE, and refreshments will be served. This event is sponsored by Art on the BeltLine and the Guggenheim Foundation.

Learn more about 'Beltline Chronicles' at contours.pubpub.org/beltline-chronicles

https://www.artsatl.org/event/performance-of-robert-barskys-the-beltline-chronicles/

Performance of Robert Barsky’s The BeltLine Chronicles - ARTS ATL Constellations is hosting a performance of Robert Barsky’s The BeltLine Chronicles, featuring...

https://creativeloafing.com/event-540053-the-beltline-chronicles-a-performance-at-constellations

“The BeltLine Chronicles”: A Performance at Constellations ATL | Creative Loafing Join us for a performance of poetry from the Beltline Chronicles *Where: Constellations, 135 Auburn Avenue, ATL 30303 *When: Saturday, September 23, 4-6 p.m. Ismail ibn Conner will represent “George,” the fictional poet who wanders around the entire BeltLine, recounting his adventures and recall...

Join us for a recital by Ismail ibn Conner from The BeltLine Chronicles, Saturday September 23rd from 4-6PM at Constellations, 135 Auburn Avenue, ATL

The BeltLine Chronicles were inspired by many wonderful bicycling adventures that I’ve enjoyed over the years, including a grueling solo trip from Albania to London in the 1980s, via Yugoslavia, Italy, Switzerland, and France. After navigating the very precarious Yugoslavian coast, I entered into Italy tired, and desperate for some company. Fortunately, I had an unexpected encounter with Lord Byron in a Trieste bookstore. He appeared in the form of his Collected Works, perched on a shelf that was otherwise entirely populated by canonical Italian authors. It was several years before I connected the dots, and realized that his presence there was probably because of his great fondness for Italy, or perhaps to honor the role he’d played in the Greek struggle for independence from Ottoman rule. Be it what it may, I carried Byron’s works to my tent that night, and fell in love with his witty, racy, wandering, urbane and digression-filled writing. Within a week or so I was deeply immersed in Childe Harolde, and when I realized that he (and Don Juan) were themselves on a tour of Spain, France, Switzerland, Italy, and Greece, I modified my bicycle route to accommodate visits to many of the places Byron describes in his addictive rhymes. By that stage in my life I’d read lots of writings by Keats, Shelley and Wordsworth, but somehow I’d managed to miss out on the pleasures of Byron’s work. I’ve subsequently made up for lost time, obsessing about him, and seeking out the many destinations he describes in his rich corpus.

I still have that same volume of Byron’s work, and I brought it with me to inspire the Atlanta The BeltLine Chronicles. We were immediately captivated by the city and its history, and inspired by Byron’s work and many other literary quests I had the idea of creating a poem about the BeltLine. This huge project has faced enormous challenges since its inception, as a 1999 Georgia Tech Master’s thesis project by Ryan Gravel; and in spite of how far it has evolved, Gravel expresses some degree of disappointment about its direction, and bemoans some of the opportunities that have been lost along the way. The keys to the project’s success hinge on affordable housing, protection and promotion of greenspaces, and the success of a long-promised light rail that undergirds the initial vision. Nevertheless, it's difficult to overstate how extraordinary this pathway is, even in its current unfinished state (it’s slated for completion by 2030), or the ways in which it is transforming a city that's mostly famous for its traffic, its sprawl, and its massive airport.

The range of lofty ambitions for the project provides a sense of its monumentality: 33 miles of multi-use urban trails, 22 miles of pedestrian-friendly rail transit, 1,300 acres of new green space, 1,100 acres of environmental clean-up, 46 miles of improved streetscapes, 50,000 permanent jobs, and 5,600 units of affordable workforce housing. Atlanta owes its existence to transportation industries since it was founded on a spot chosen for the final stop of the Western & Atlantic Railroad line. It’s therefore appropriate that this 22-mile project be built atop a ring of railway tracks that circled the city's urban core, and that plans call for a modern rail system to connect with the existing MARTA subway system. Even in its current state, the BeltLine has emerged as a magnet for investment, tourism, and urban activity, and a catalyst for remarkable artworks. Art on the BeltLine has already hosted almost 500 public art exhibitions in an array of media, including graffiti, sculpture, painting, dance, music, performance art and…an epic poem, the product of a year-long investigation into ways of transforming the experience of the BeltLine into Beltline Chronicles.

I needed a poetic template for my proposed epic, so of course I returned to Byron’s work for both guidance and inspiration. I adopted the name George, in honor of George Gordon, Lord Byron, and consulted Lindsay Waters’ scholarly works about Byron’s poetics. Waters led me to discover some really inspiring work by Luigi Pulci (1432-1484), whose works I’d never read. Byron loved Pulci’s poetry, and translated part of Morgante Maggiore (1483) in late 1819 and early 1820, during which time he was writing Canto III of Don Juan. Based loosely on the Chanson de Roland, Morgante Maggiore catalogues improbable knightly deeds in delightful verses, which makes it a fun precursor for George’s BeltLine adventures. Byron also admired John Hookham Frere (1769-1846), most notably his mock-heroic Arthurian poem called Prospectus and Specimen of an intended National Work, by William and Robert Whistlecraft, of Stowmarket in Suffolk, Harness and Collar Makers, which emulates the Italian medley style that Byron adopted for Don Juan, which George in turn harnesses at times for his Chronicles.

The BeltLine Chronicles thus feature an array of rhyme schemes, lengths of line, rhythms, and other stylistic characteristics that I learned through the process of exploring Byron’s poetics, and which George hones in the course of his explorations. The rhyme scheme is fairly regular throughout each Canto, as are the line lengths and the rhythms, but these and other formal elements vary and shift over time (a bit like the pathways it describes). The poem is also filled with references to, and citations from, a broad array of epic quests, treasure hunts, and heroic adventures of well-known characters who were inspired, or forced, to travel through space and time. There’s a long history of writers who commemorate or unify existing spaces, and when George sets off on his own epic quest he reflects upon all kinds of precursory voyages: Odysseus’s return home to Ithaca, Arthurian legends of romance and adventure, Dante the Pilgrim’s travels through Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso; Don Quixote’s great knightly feats; Frankenstein’s monster’s quest for safety in the higher climes of Chamonix; Alexander Pushkin wanderings along Nevsky Prospekt; Dracula’s successful crossing of the English Channel; Blaise Cendrars’ travels on the Trans-Siberian train from Moscow to Harbin (in Mongolia); James Joyce’s epic 24 hours in Dublin; Alice’s great adventures in Wonderland; Haven’s founding families attempt to create a paradise for themselves in Toni Morrison’s Paradise; and Ismail Smile’s quest for love in Salman Rushdie’s Quichotte. Texts like these can create a sense of wholeness, and provide new meaning, to disparate spaces. People can return to these works to experience the places described, and they can visit those places thinking about the works that invoke them. I hope that readers will do the same with the Atlanta BeltLine, and the BeltLine Chronicles.

My poet George shares with me a special interest in social justice, and the relationship between equity, peace, community, and public space. I have conceived of this work as a form of healing because the BeltLine – by connecting previously segregated neighborhoods and experiences – becomes a space of hope for a better world. To prepare for the process of writing this collection, I scoured archives devoted to great figures from the civil rights movement in Atlanta, including Ralph David Abernathy, Maynard Jackson Jr., Coretta Scott King, Bernice Albertine King, Gladys Knight, John Lewis, Joseph Lowery, Roslyn Pope, Hermann Russell, and Andrew Young. Martin Luther King emerges as the great hero of this epic exploration, and his words resonate throughout the Chronicles. I’m very grateful to the archivists, librarians, teachers and guides who have helped me to understand the painful journey that has led us to contemporary Atlanta, and the many miles we still have to travel if we hope to find purpose and hope for a better tomorrow.

I have loved my excursions on different sections of the BeltLine, and it has been a great joy to reflect upon the relationship between urban spaces and poetic stanzas. To better understand the former, I’ve met with urban planners who have conceived of, and developed, the BeltLine and spaces adjacent thereto. After one memorable bike trip with Stacy Patton and Angel Poventud, I was inspired to buy an electric mountain bike and, like them, to make excursions on various sections of the BeltLine a regular activity. The bike has become my powerful steed and, honoring Sir Gawain, Don Quixote and Lord Byron himself, I’ve mounted it and sought out adventures. In the course of these amazing treks I’ve met dozens, nay hundreds of people who have told me about their BeltLine. Stacy Patton came over to my house one day with a massive bag of developers plans, pamphlets and maps, as well as a host of books including Ryan Gravel’s take on the whole project, and a copy of the remarkable work of Mark Pendergrast called City on the Verge.

Knowing of their remarkable artistic talents, I asked Susan Ker-Seymer and Lauren McKee if they’d be willing to create drawings to accompany this project. Susan has created the extraordinary abstract works that invoke BeltLine-like worlds on the cover and at the beginning of each Canto, and Lauren has created an array of different Georges, taking cues from the indeterminate descriptions of this poet that run through the Chronicles. I’m grateful to everyone who has contributed to this project, and to the thousands of people who have been involved in the ongoing work to build Atlanta’s BeltLine. And as always, I’m especially grateful to Marsha, who has, in her words, always been “along for the ride”.

The Guggenheim Foundation has provided me with the world and time to build this story, and Vanderbilt University subventioned their generosity with the gift of a sabbatical. And thanks to a grant from the BeltLine Arts Commission, we will have several performances of The BeltLine Chronicles that will feature the venerable Ismail ibn Conner who will play, imitate, reflect upon, and create…. George.