“Notes From A Hackberry Seed”
in collaboration with Helena Sarin
published by Feral File / The VerseVerse
Language At The Scale of the City
I write creative texts for installation, projection, public art and immersion.
Building on the big shoulders of city-wide art-making experiences with Chicago’s now-defunct Redmoon Theater, I am passionate about language in action, language in support of image, movement, experience and spectacle.
Poems for big canvases… words to be spoken and read, fleeting and memorable.
‘FLOE,’ a climate-change dance-theater parable
FLOE, adapted for video projection. “Only a fool would close their eyes to the open water.” Premiering April 2022, Merchandise Mart, Chicago
If we—
If someday we—
If we go down
We’re all going down together.
There’s a leak in the world and we’re taking on water.
Come up to the crow’s nest. You can see.
Let’s make a rope around the mast from me to you—
a knot so fast
that if one is washed away
the other is too.
‘MORE PERFECT PLACES,’ a midwestern Utopian experiment
“More Perfect Places,” New Harmony IN, installation, play and community engagement work. Premiering Summer 2022
YELLOW-THROATED WARBLER
I see from overhead a brave woman moving west and big boats moving south then east.
Wind-people, wind-things like me. I’m a yellow-throated warbler.
I’m sitting on a branch, and I have something to say.
There are many colors of change.
Mine is yellow, my change comes fast and light.
We yellow-throated warblers move quickly, sing sweetly.
Change, for us, is a warm wind telling us it’s time to come back up to the Middle West,
to the lake and prairie place, where hard earth is turning soft and worm-delicious.
A voice saying: there are more Utopias in Indiana than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
I learned this from Tabitha and the people in New Albany, the African Methodist Episcopalians.
Their story’s in the library, you just need to look.
I need to flit. I’m flying. I’m changing. I’m gone.
THE PICTURE BOOK, a civic spectacle
The Picture Book, Ballyboffey, Ireland. A civic spectacle created with elementary-school authors and animators to honor local poet Frances Browne, commissioned and premiered for the opening of the Earagail Arts Festival.