ARTIST STATEMENT

My poetry is heavily rooted the concept of survival. It examines the result of managing to have lived through something, and the realization of a continuing existence that remains after similar things have been lost or forgotten. Not only are we faced, each day, with challenges of nature, but we are faced with dangers that we impose on ourselves and those around us -- the dangers of our respective surroundings, the dangers of intimacy, and our efforts to face an environment of unrelenting struggle.

The topics through which I explore survival are greatly varied and derive from a broad range of interests and imagination: desire, landscape, botany, ethology, entomology, archaeology, seasons and nature. Non-literary art forms are also deeply influential to my poetry. Much of my work is ekphrastic, or about other forms of art. More than simple homage to the original object, my attempts at ekphrasis examine what kinds of art are able to ultimately remain after the passing of time.

Just as prevalent as the visual arts are in my writing - though perhaps more subtly apparent - is music. My poetry seeks to find an ear for the rhythms of language, leaning into a space where sound creates texture and even meaning. With this focus on the sound of language, I strive to reach a cumulative effect that is not unlike a song. After all, melody itself can have significance that stands apart from the meaning of words.

Though my range of interests and influences is diverse and idiosyncratic, these inspirations synthesize where invisible and internal truths can find expression externally. Their significance surfaces in the ways that limitations can both complicate and cultivate survival, and how these complications may manifest themselves in our human attachments to others, to spaces, to objects or even times, and to the places that we decide to call "home."