performance

What’s the poetics of my body, here
What language is my movement trying to say

–The genius of my possession

POLLEN/SWOLLEN (series, 2025), in progress

_{^{event photos and detail by Peter Raper}}_{^{at Northampton Center for the Arts / HUT, MA, May 10, 2025.}}

_{i project original poems about queer plant consciousness onto tree canopies (some bare, some in full-foliage). the shape of the tree – interacting with the text – creates a new text. i photograph the new text, then transcribe it into written language, then, project this text once again onto the tree. i’m curious about extended cognition, collaboration, and revision, and alternate forms of intelligence. i am curious about learning directly from the trees.}

_{text and image from this project are forthcoming in blush lit Fall 2025, online with an audio-visual component, and in a print edition.}

short film for Nan (2024)

_{^{photos by the artist, MA, 2024}}

_{secret performance in memory of a friend. film projection indoors during daylight, original poetry. in conversation with the hands of Agnes Varda, Yvonne Rainer, Cecilia Vicuña.}

prism / cocoon (2024)

_{^{photos by Stella Silbert at Unnameable Bite / Unnameable Books, Turners Falls, MA, 2024.}}

_{roll of paper, charcoal, dirt, tea, rainwater, choreographed floor movements. i gave paper to audience. i was curious about life-giving properties of water and earth.}

apocalunar spring (installation by Tucker Kapp and Wilfried Kathemann, 2024)

_{^{photo by Tucker Kapp, Les écrits 9 studio, Gaillac, France, 2024}}

_{an excerpt from my chapbook APOCALUNE was engraved into the trunk of an oak tree by Tucker Kapp and Wilfried Kathemann in Gaillac, France, for the Spring of Poets. the excerpt was translated into the French by Kapp and Kathemann. they also arranged a piece on prepared piano adapted from APOCALUNE and performed it for the festival. the oak engraving remains installed in the town.}

possession study (series, 2019-2020)

_{^{photos by the artist, Denver, CO, 2019-2020}}

_{secret performance. generative ritual and research while writing a book of hybrid essay and poetry on possession and exorcism. i was curious about gestation and hosting.}

breath sculpture (2018)

_{^{photo by artist, Putney, VT, 2018}}

_{tulle, air.}

ruin (silk series, 2015-2017)

_{^{photos by: Mairead Case at Dikeou Collection, Denver, CO, 2017; Indigo Deaney (2016) and Brian Buckley (2016, 2015) at Innisfree, Boulder, CO.}}

_{i ripped silk fabric with my teeth while reading poetry on poverty and domestic violence written onto the fabric. i covered the audience with the fabric or draped it through the aisle. originally conceived from a prompt from Bhanu Kapil when inviting me to perform at her release reading for Ban en Banlieue, “perform a piece about your meat history.”}

lifted on the snow (2016)

_{^{photos by Jeffrey Pethybridge, Boulder CO, 2016}}

_{dipping poems in bowl of fresh snow – smoothing pieces of ripped wet paper and sticking them to the floor – reading the poems from the floor – licking the poems from the floor – and swallowing them. (pethybridge has also documented this performance in his long poem force drift.)}

ice bath (2015)

_{^{photos by Ellie Swensson at Jaipur Literature Festival, Boulder creek CO, 2015}}

_{dipped poems handwritten on pink memo paper into the Boulder Creek (on-site) – wrung water out of poems – read from the torn pieces on the grass.} _{the paper was a gift from Karen Kukil, from the same Smith College memo pads used by Sylvia Plath to draft the Ariel poems.}

_{while i was reading from the wet poems that i’d scattered on the ground, a woman from the audience hurried up, knelt down next to me, and started to gather up the pieces of paper and smooth them out. she thought they’d been ruined unintentionally.}

i can’t think of a time i was not desirable (2015)

_{^{photos by Laird Hunt, Boulder, CO, 2016.}}

_{draped a curtain over my body and pulled it taut over my face while reciting a piece of hybrid prose on gender-based violence, eventually gagging myself.}