Where poets and science collide in the body — “Could menstruation and its observances in fact be experienced as empowering for women?” Social anthropologist Camilla Power writes, discussing the tradition of menstrual huts of Northern California’s Yurok people. I read this, while menstruating alone in my basement apartment, in the middle of quarantine, grieving the loss of blood —…

On Navel Gazing, Mental Health, and Women Writers in Emily Pennington’s Memoir — I read Feral faster than I’ve read a book in a long while. It was with a force of determination: a need to get through the chaotic whirl-wind 2020 tour of 63 National Park stops in Emily Pennington’s new memoir of messy, muddy, often dusty, human accomplishment. As I read…

A review of Chelsea Stickle’s new chapbook from Thirty West Publishing — When lockdown began Stephanie Michele and I exchanged an old suitcase. She filled it with books; I filled it with fruit on her birthday. We dropped it on the doorsteps of houses above our basement apartments and waved from our cars. …

Winter Rituals A Flame — I just typed this line: in time all things burn. In a new adaptation of Bluebeard also known as the woman murderer, I’ve made Blu aka the man with the azul beard the fourth generation man to inherit coal land. …

A Wisdom Body Collective Series on Artist Statements — Weeks ago, I launched our series on artist statements with a call to action — why artist statements are an important artifact of artistic communication. In reality, I’ve made very few public artistic statments. …

Poetry Sunday

On writing artist statements, A Wisdom Body Series — In the summer of 2008, I enrolled in Writing for Artists at UCSC. Taught by Christina Waters, a local journalist whose name was (any likely still is) always a byline in the Goodtimes, we spent the summer writing and rewriting short statements about artwork. We watched Andy Goldsworthy’s Rivers and…