I have been an admirer of Alice Fulton’s poetry for several years now, and have used her evocative turns of phrase as titles for two of my previous works. I had wanted to compose a musical setting of her poems for quite some time, but had difficulty finding the appropriate medium, as her words seemed to resist a traditional musical setting. It finally occurred to me that I was really interested in creating an elaboration of a poetry reading — after all, poets often “perform” their own works just as musicians do, so it seemed natural to create a sonic environment around the poet’s spoken words. Three Poems from Felt was drawn from Fulton’s 2001 collection of poems, which lent themselves particularly well to such a setting.

The work was first performed by the poet on 4 April 2005 at the University of North Texas. It is included on the album Improbable Encounters (innova 873, 2014).