We Have Taken and Eaten: A Monodrama for Solo Percussionist
A collaboration with composer Scott Wollschleger and percussionist Kevin Sims, We Have Taken and Eaten has played to audiences in Little Rock, Arkansas; Graz, Austria; and Altoona, Pennsylvania. The poems from which my libretto draws respond to ideas and questions raised by two sources: the origin stories in the biblical Genesis and Englishman Thomas Hariot's Narrative of the First English Plantation in Virginia, a sixteenth-century account written in support of North American colonization. In responding to these texts, We Have Taken and Eaten explores the relationship between relentless productivity and punishment/oppression.
- We Have Taken and Eaten on Arts & Letters
- Live in Graz, Austria in October 2018
- The score and libretto for We Have Taken and Eaten was published by Project Schott New York in 2015; in that publication the libretto is titled "The Chinquapin Tree"
Collaborations with Jennifer Tucker / Salvage
- Poems w/ Jennifer's photographs in the American Poetry Review
- Collaborations for Fem-Fusion: Virtual Art + The Written Word
Red Clover Projects
The projects and writings listed below are some of the collaborations I've undertaken with abortion care and reproductive justice organizations. I call these "red clover" projects after the insights of flower essence practitioners, who use essence of red clover to protect against mass panic & anxiety caused by social injustice. Red clover is also traditionally used to enhance courage and steadiness.
- Red Clover Cuffs for the West Alabama Women's Center
Front Lines Project: Poets & Physicians Document Covid-19
Front Lines began in the spring of 2020, when sisters Elizabeth Fernandez (an emergency room physician in NYC) and Nicole Miyashiro (Writer-in-Residence at the PA Center for the Book, Penn State University) teamed up to connect poets with NYC-area physicians. At the heart of this collaboration is a belief in poetry's capability to provide space for catharsis, shared understanding, and healing. I was honored to connect with Abbas Husain, MD, and to write a cycle of disintegrated sonnets after his experiences.