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collaborations

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.

  • 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

This inter-generational collaboration began in the 1970s, when photographer/herbalist Jennifer Anne Tucker and mixed-media artist Harriet Rosenberg embarked on a 25-year photography collaboration spurred by their involvement in the burgeoning women’s movement in northern Appalachia. By the time Rosenberg died in 2019, I had befriended both artists but had only heard about the photographs, which remained mostly unseen at Tucker’s farmhouse. After Rosenberg’s death, Tucker invited me to see the images and think about what might be done with them; a series of collaborative installations and ekphrasis poems followed. At the same time, I started work on an independent project, a mixed-media essay called Salvage, exploring questions spurred by my work with Tucker.
 
Abby, Red Poppies, Harriet, by Jennifer Anne Tucker
 

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.


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.