This collection of poetry and artwork collaborations is part of a project that includes a 7 volume series of booklets featuring word and image collaborations between Max Blagg and 21 other visual artists, entitled Late Start For Mardi Gras. Late Start began in 2019 with a 200 hundred page printout of one of Blagg’s poetry manuscripts, that his wife randomly began sewing onto canvases and tacking to his studio walls. This resourceful tool made the words visible and tangible to the writer, facilitating their further edit and redaction, while he convalesced from a tick-borne illness. These ‘text-canvases’, stitched by hand and machine, range in size from 12”x 60” to 48”x 72”, each comprising anywhere from 4 to 16 pages of text. Late Start’s development was also spontaneous. With a couple dozen of these canvases on hand, Blagg invited artists to collaborate. They chose their ‘ready-made’ by title or text, working directly on the canvas or creating an entirely new piece. This compilation of 21 poems and collaborative artworks is preserved as it appears in the booklet series, featuring the work of these artists: Golnar Adili, Ellen Berkenblit, Ernesto Caivano, Michael Combs, Peter Dayton, Sally Egbert, Eric Fischl, James Gilroy, Nan Goldin, Michael Halsband, Curtis Kulig, Justen Ladda, Ruth Marten, Jamie Nares, Walter Robinson, Nick Rule, Will Ryman, Ken Tisa, Walter Schrank, Ryan Wallace and Lucy Winton.