Contact Zones

Abstract

In my work, I explore forms of incantation and free-verse poetry in order to locate and interrogate the rhetorical, the metaphysical, and the corporeal border between linguistic behavior and sociocultural experience. Conceptually, my work is informed by Kristie S. Fleckenstein's research, particularly her theory of Bodysigns and Biorhetoric. Using this framework, I juxtapose the arrangement of physical/material forms and lexical/semiotic codes as each are translated through the human body and its changing environs. I'm interested in examining how human relationships evolve through time and experience, and how spatial identities, reflected through these temporal/experiential environs, inform and re-form our relationships with the natural world. It is this natural/rhetorical tethering that privileges orality over textuality in my work, as each of my poems reward recitation.