Welcome…

In her essay “Poetry Is Not a Luxury,” Audre Lorde wrote that, “Poetry is not only dream and vision; it is the skeleton architecture of our lives.” This Substack is the skeleton architecture of mine.

Why subscribe?

Because you appreciate my writing and would like to follow it. And/or because the idea of receiving a new poem in your inbox every week or so sounds delightful (this is what the free subscription will get you, plus peeks at the previously published and unpublished poems and projects I’ve archived here).

Every new post will be sent directly to your email inbox. Or, for a spam-free, ad-free reading experience — plus audio and community features — get the Substack app.1

Why become a paid subscriber?

You’d like to…

• have full, ongoing access to all the poems/archives,

• listen to audio readings (coming soon, likely sporadically),

• receive occasional writing prompts to spark your own poetry practice, and/or

• simply support my writing.

Note: I haven’t activated paid subscriptions yet, but if you subscribe now you should automatically have the option to also “pledge” a paid subscription (which will only be charged once they’re activated).

More about me and this space…

Books, writing, and reading are my original special interests.

I learned to read early, around age 4/5, and I remember consciously deciding to learn how to write around the same time because I wanted to create my own stories. The absorption continued through elementary, middle, and high school. As a teenager, I wrote a 200-page fantasy novel, several chapters of which earned me a spot in The Kenyon Review’s Young Writers Workshop even though I was a year too young for the age cutoff. And, unsurprisingly, as a young adult, the identity that came to matter the most to me was being a poet.

As an undergraduate student at McGill University, I talked my way into the literature department’s only poetry workshop (despite the fact that it wasn’t supposed to be open to first years), won the Chester MacNaghten Prize for “the best piece of creative writing in English submitted by an undergraduate student” at the end of my freshman year, and spent four years working on the literary journal Montage — regularly publishing poems and performing as part of the journal’s monthly reading series. In 2001, I also formed the Echophilia collective with four other women writers and visual artists, and together we produced the photo-poetic installation Compositions 1 (Montreal, Lotus Eaters Gallery, 2001/2002).

In 2003, I moved to Cambridge, UK, to attend graduate school. There, I connected with the experimental poetry community that was coalescing around the university at that time. In 2004, after finishing a Master’s of Philosophy in Architecture and the Moving Image (through which I experimented with weaving together poetry and site-specific video installation), I moved to London and worked as a teaching artist for various organizations, and as an Adjunct Lecturer in Creative Writing at Royal Holloway, University of London — teaching poetry to kids of all ages, university students, teachers, and seniors. I was invited to join and write with the Bedford Square Group assembled by Redell Olsen, Andrea Brady, and Lucy Sherman, a beautiful community of experimental women writers. I pursued various creative collaborations with other writers, artists, photographers, and composers (some documented on this Substack). I published two chapbooks: String Theories (London, Bad Press, 2005) and Motion Study (London, Bad Press, 2005). I was one of the early poets to be recorded and added to the Archive of the Now (which, sadly, was hacked by Anonymous in 2014 and no longer exists). I was invited to perform at the Contemporary Experimental Womenʼs Poetry Festival held in Cambridge, UK, in 2006. And from 2006 to 2009, I served as the Managing Editor of the experimental feminist poetry journal How2.

In 2007, I moved back to the States, to New York City, where I continued to write and perform after transitioning into a full-time role at an arts nonprofit. In 2008, I co-wrote the limited edition artbook Spell/ing ( ) Bound with Kathrin Schaeppi and Cara Benson (published by Ellectrique Press) — and I wrote the chapbook Personages as part of the 3rd Dusie Kollectiv (published by Dusie). In 2009, I co-wrote WEE 3 (I, First by Cara Benson; wee-i by Kathrin Schaeppi; iGoogle by Kai Fierle-Hedrick), three linked chapbooks co-published by Ellectrique Press and Dusie Press as part of Dusie’s “Wee Chap” project series. In 2010, my text installation Exercises was included in the Department of Micropoetics’ exhibition Exchange Value at the AC Institute in New York — and, as part of the same show, I collaborated with poet Rachel Zolf on Exchange Values, an on-site/off-site residency. That same year, my long poem “Transference” was also published in the multilingual anthology 11 9 Web Streaming Poetry, edited by Tzveta Sofronieva (Belgrade, Supernova Editions, 2010). In 2011, I collaborated with composer Joseph Di Ponio to write “Accrual” — a poem/composition for voice and flute that premiered at the Lagerquist Concert Hall in Tacoma, WA. I continued to publish in poetry journals and give occasional readings. And in 2015, I was invited to contribute work to the anthology Out of Everywhere 2: Linguistically Innovative Poetry by Women in North America & the UK.

Then I stopped writing.

Over the years people have asked why, and I’ve struggled to explain it: sometimes I cited the demands of a 9-to-5 job, sometimes I chalked it up to not finding a poetry community in New York like the one I’d had in London, and sometimes I claimed I just didn’t have anything to say. Yet, while there were kernels of truth in each excuse, none felt exactly true. Heavy workloads, isolation, and writer’s block had never shut down my practice before. And, in all honesty, what I was experiencing didn’t feel rational. It felt like a switch flipped, and suddenly I’d descended into a long, confusing period of longing — but feeling unable — to write. In rare moments, when I found myself feeling genuinely free, I still jotted down short fragments or drafts of poems. And this filled a surprising number of notebooks while I wasn’t paying attention. But I struggled to write with intention and published rarely. Well, not at all, aside from when an old poet friend invited me to contribute to the Chicago Review’s #MeToo: A Poetry Collective feature in 2018. Poetry began to feel like a past life.

Recently, the experiences of facilitating my AuDHD (Autistic + ADHD) and PDA kiddo through their psychoeducational assessment process — and then being late diagnosed as AuDHD myself — have shed new light on my writing journey. And my current working theory is that a big part of what has shaped my struggle to write all these years is PDA-related demand avoidance — which, cruelly, can be triggered even by the activities that bring us the most joy.

It’s my hope that this Substack will offer…

• A way for me to reconnect with my “past life” as a writer. I was incredibly prolific in my 20s, which left me with a lot of unpublished work. Well, that and the fact that my ADHD meant I would finish a manuscript, publish a handful of poems, and then get bored with shopping the rest around because the work felt old (aka lacking in dopamine)… and on to the next project! I’ve archived a lot of this unpublished writing on this Substack because it’s a nicer place for it to live than in a filing cabinet.

• A low-demand place for me to start practicing/publishing poetry again. All those fragments and drafts I’ve been squirreling away in notebooks over the last 10+ years could use some knitting together into new poems. And I’m beginning to feel free enough to try.

Thank you for reading, and for supporting my writing process <3.