The Poetry Foundation's Poetry magazine will be sending a scented edition to subscribers this December, and will be opening the scent exhibit Volatile! at their Gallery in Chicago this December.

The December issue of Poetry magazine, the oldest publication devoted to verse, has asked the perfumer D.S. & Durga to translate Jeffrey Skinner’s poem, “The Bookshelf of the God of Infinite Space,” into a custom scent, available to subscribers. The scent will be microencapsulated onto an insert in the magazine.

[...] “Great art is a keyhole that we peek through, opening onto larger, collective spaces,” says David Moltz, the genius behind the Brooklyn-based perfumerie. “Poetry and perfume both utilize the power of suggestion and are capable of creating entire worlds through subtle illusion.”

Please note that the scented edition of Poetry magazine will only be available to subscribers if they subscribe before October 23. Interested readers may subscribe here.

The poetry and scent exhibition Volatile! will be hosted at The Poetry Foundation Gallery in Chicago, from December 11 through February 19:

What if every poem had its own fragrance, beyond the literal smell of the materiality of the page? What if one could smell the poet’s imaginative, conceptual, intellectual world, the text unfurling into an aroma? In Volatile!, design historian Debra Riley Parr presents a number of objects and experiences that invite speculative connections between poetry and scent.

The exhibit will be open Monday through Friday, 11 am — 4 pm. For more information, see the Poetry Foundation website.

(via press release)