This book is contained within the rib cage and organs of plastic, thread and paper, with a poem that calls to the purpose of the body's most complicated machines. I started this as a challenge of form -- the body as a sort of gate-style coptic bind -- but found it came together emotionally after my husband underwent heart surgery later in the year. As I watched the echocardiograms, I marveled at the unknown landscape of machines working away for purposes they don't even understand.

This work explores the legacy of lost birdsong through book art forms. Each of the six books represents a commonly lost Baltimore bird. When the book is closed, the bird appears to be dead and devoid of color; when its pages are opened, the bird comes alive through colorful paper popups and poetry that reveal secrets of the voices lost to the lights.

These were shown as part of Lynne Parks' group show Unfriendly Skies: Birds, Buildings, and Collisions exhibits at Goucher College and George Mason University in 2015.

This trio of fabric book dolls is based on poems I’ve written about characters in the Günter Grass novel The Tin Drum. They represent three generations: Anna Bronski (the grandmother); Agnes Matzerath (the mother); and Oskar (the son, and the book's protagonist).

I've tried to make the physical experience of reading each poem doll mirror an aspect of the doll's character, and also somewhat intrusive -- as each poem touches on private, uncomfortable moments of their lives. You must lift a skirt, or unzip a dress, or unbutton suspenders to read their stories.

You can hear each poem and see the dolls in action by viewing the attached video.

More at http://kineticprose.com/2012/12/06/tin-drum-update-the-trio-is-complete/

This "living fossil" book sculpture is made mainly from paper bags, eyelets and glue. A poem is hidden within the horseshoe crab's book gills -- one stanza per segment. The legs, tail and gills move, as do the front and middle sections of "carapace." You can read more about the project here: http://kineticprose.com/2013/04/22/living-fossil-book/.

Homing is a book made completely of fabric, with hand-embroidered text. The feathers, or “pages,” tack to the body of the bird with red buttons. When opened, they reveal a poem that reads forward and backward, depending on which side of the bird you’re on, to represent the bird’s migration from north to south and back.

Poem text:

north says
it is time
all that you own
tucked neatly within
homing
south says

south says
it is time
all that you own
tucked neatly within
homing
north says

I have made many, many books of poems, paper, fabric and other materials. These are a few of my favorites.

Autobiography is a book made with plastic freezer bags, cotton thread, binder board and baby lima beans. Each bean has been inscribed with a word, allowing the poem to flow freely and change within the book. The center bean is blank, representing the author’s uncertainty about motherhood. This is an edition of five. This book was included in the 2009 Bind-O-Rama on Philobiblon.com, the Book Arts Web.

This year, we're celebrating the 10th anniversary of The Light Ekphrastic, a quarterly online ekphrasis journal that has paired writers and visual artists of all types to create new pieces based on previous work since November 2009. More than 450 contributors have participated over the last 10 years, with many contributors from the Baltimore-D.C. area, and others from as far away as Canada, Australia, Japan, and Germany.

In honor of the 10th anniversary, in November TLE hosted a special panel at this year's Light City/Brilliant Baltimore; and TLE is currently running a special format projct entitled "Exquisite Fantastic," publishing a new artist or writer every two weeks in a continuous exquisite corpse-style format through March 2020. In the spring, we hope to create a show in or around Baltimore to celebrate our local artists and writers, and to inspire new people in the community to explore their creativity through ekphrasis of various types.

Although The Light Ekphrastic is found primarily online, it has also spilled over into real-life venues over the years. The Light Ephrastic paired with LED Baltimore in March 2015 to curate The Baltimore Ekphrasis Project, through which we paired 66 artists and writers from the Baltimore area to create new work that was displayed on the LED Art Board next to Penn Station, as well as in a special online issue of TLE. A reading/pop-up art show was held at UB, with more than 100 guests in attendance.

We held our very first show of pairings of art and writing at the David Mikow Gallery in Catonsville in February 2013, and again at the same location in February 2014, and again in 2015, each time bringing together artists and writers who had previously only met online to discuss their processes in responding to each others' work.

Photos below attempt to show how this process works, but it's much better to visit the real thing at http://thelightekphrastic.com.

The Baltimore Ekphrasis Project was a collaboration between LED Baltimore and my online journal, The Light Ekphrastic. I chose sixty-six Baltimore-area writers and artists to create new work inspired by the work of their partners. Final written works were presented as excerpts on top of art on the LEDBaltimore Billboard in Station North, and in full in a special online issue of The Light Ekphrastic: http://thelightekphrastic.com/led/. As editor of TLE, I created the slides for the billboard and the full online edition, and organized and hosted a reading and pop-up art show at the University Baltimore.