Paragones
In Paragones, my second full-length collection of poetry, I offer readers poems that respond to works of art by female-identifying artists. Moving beyond the ekphrastic tradition which centers on a descriptive account of an object, my poems include formal, historical, and personal responses to a variety of individual works. As poems from the collection are published, I'm sharing them here. You can see some of the images of the work and lives that have inspired these poems below and by following this IG: Paragones“The Couple” for Lee Bontecou- The COMMON
Written in response to her work of the same name, on display at Mass MoCA, and published in issue 20 of The Common
“(up to now separately)” for Mierle Laderman Ukeles - CRAFT LITERARY
Editors’ choice selections for CRAFT Literary's 2022 Amelia Gray 2K Contest | Author’s Note
Top: Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Washing/Tracks/Maintenance: Outside (July 23, 1973) by Patricia Hickson
Bottom: Photo by Steve Harvey
“Francesca Woodman (1958-1981)” for SWWIM
“through the pinhole, watching” for Betsy Kenyon’s Slumber
“AgencY” for Braving the Body (Small Harbor Publishing, 2024)
Braving the Body, an astonishing new anthology edited by Nicole Callihan, Pichchenda Bao, and Jennifer Franklin, reminds us that to brave the body one must survive it. Or transgress it. Or claim it radically. “Give me a live girl, a mess,” begs KC Trommer, “one with a mouth for talking,” and we’re reminded of all that constructs the body, making it more than simply flesh and bone and organs. Braving the Body reimagines the body as “factory,” as grateful objectness, as aspirational and asking, “How did Jesus keep / his girlish figure?” After these 116 poems—at times achingly visceral, at others necessarily light-filled—you’ll wonder how you ever thought a body was a thing you knew. —Dawn Lundy Martin, author of Good Stock Strange Blood