There can be no society without poetry, but society can never be realized as poetry…. Sometimes the two terms seek to break apart. They cannot. — Octavio PazI work by asking how any act, from a poem’s aesthetic decisions to a transaction like publication, can be an instance of what else the world can be. I am not a neutral actor in any of this, but a witness and participant in the possible.
After the release of my last book of poems, Dark~Sky Society, I understood in a new way the limits of art that’s simply a witness to violence, that it could also participate differently in our violent society. Like any gardener, I could see that whatever I would grow thus needed to include attention to the
S O c I a L
I needed to leave the page, work in projects that blur the line between literary and social forms. My two newest books, one poetry and one nonfiction, are both “embookbodiments,” blending literary and participatory art forms in order to collaborate with readers. I’m particularly interested in supporting new roles for white people, like myself, since current imaginaries about whiteness seamlessly infect our gestures, whether artistic or social. I value:
low barriers to entry
communal actions that recenter inherited, extractive power dynamics
small adaptations/projects that have big multiplier effects in the social fabric
life-giving refusals (I/ we are not for sale or co-optation)
experiences that light us up, and give us energy to keep going
In the classroom, my art practice has shown up as decentering my authority in order to support student-led praxis. That led out of the classroom into all my communities, working with others to build together in a kind of “classroom of the world.” In these local gathering projects I aim to take on burden and risk, and disrupt extractive social relations as a necessary step in remaking society. For instance, I don’t take credit ie present the work on my resume, social media, or receive payment. This is a crucial gesture if collaborating across sometimes starkly asymmetrical power relations. Attention to the different burdens/benefits of all collaborators enables us to focus on care and trust.
I am influenced by apprenticeships to black liberation movements, liberatory pedagogies and guerrilla intellectuals; longtime training in engaged Buddhism and in conflict transformation. And by my upbringing: raised white in majority-black Washington DC; spending time in my mother’s country, Ireland; and being a child of a disabled father from the US south.
I understand the world as dominated by forces that willfully ignore calls for accountability and integrity while hiding behind narratives that say otherwise, a brutal tactic that’s also numbingly familiar. I see my practice and collaborations as a key step in dissolving those forces, by accessing the deeper layers——in personal experience or institutional policies—- where the dis-owned parts of society lie. I want my work to allow us each to access these as remedies: in our bodies, poems, conversations, and communities.