artist statement 2

In my poetry, the body is key.  My branch of embodied poetics recognizes that silence stems not just from a lack of will or fear of being heard, but also from absence of tongue or vocal chords.  With modern technology allowing the poet to create at a rate of 85 word per minute, the fingers are forgotten in the creation of the poem.  We do not recognize the poetic experience as a melding of mind and body or a practice that obscures the line between soul and flesh but instead bow (figuratively, not literally) to our Muses.

I seek to obscure the line between mental and physical, artistic and scientific, word and music; my writing draws upon the suffering of one with continuous acute pain poetically referred to as the body broken, scientifically identified as myofascial pain syndrome.  Yet, as I traipse pen in hand through the world of medicine and medical fallibility, I become increasingly interested in its poetic nature, duality fades and powerfully diminishes.

As a graduate student, I study the ways in which words are used to describe the experience of pain.  Interestingly, the scientific community has a list of terms compiled for the understanding of a patient's pain, what is referred to as the McGill Pain Questionnaire.  Pain can be "sharp" or "splitting," "sickening" or "suffocating."

I wish to do away with the dualism which so permeates our society.  Pain, for me, is not simply bad.  There are certain advantages.  Poetry allows the pain to speak for itself and allows me, my mind, my fingers, and my aching neck to scream out to be heard.  Rather than hide my pain from my subjectivity in the artistic process, I work to exemplify Lourde's one-breasted woman, the wounded figure who calls the other disfigured souls to her side in the creation of community.

Note-- probably should note something about embodiment of race too...  get some other subjectivity-ness in here.