Writing
I write. I keep writing. The result: more than a dozen books and numerous articles, short stories, and poetry in print and online, published in the U.S. and abroad. Nonfiction topics include dance, embodiment, healing, consciousness, mindfulness, and play. Poetry is somatic and ecoproprioceptive. My fiction tends toward magical realism. When creativity knocks, I answer the door to a verbal flow.
Nonfiction
I’ve had the great fortune to speak with and write about many great performers such as Merce Cunningham, Kazuo Ohno, Rachel Rosenthal and others. The result is books and articles that focus on dance, embodiment, radiant aliveness, and living and working in South Korea.
Contact Improvisation: An Introduction to a Vitalizing Dance Form
This book is my thanks to founder Steve Paxton and co-founder Nancy Stark Smith, who were both my teachers, for creating this groundbreaking improvisational dance, and my wanting to share my enthusiasm about this dance with both dancers and nondancers.
The text begins with a history, then describes the elements that define this form of dance. Buy the book on McFarland Books or Amazon.
Ginseng Tango: A Travel Memoir
Ginseng Tango chronicles my move to the Korean peninsula to teach English, American culture, and dance while going through a divorce. It follows my involvement with tango, Buddhism, shamanism, and acupuncture while dodging death threats from a jealous woman. The memoir reveals my joy and unease as a foreigner while navigating struggles between ancient and modern practices, western and eastern ideals, feminism and Confucianism as North Korea launches missiles. Buy the book on Amazon.
Poetry
More so than any other genre, poetry allows me to experience an ecstasy of written expression and grounds me in Buddhist nondual awareness. Words move me, write me, and take me to mind-altering places.
Her Body Listening
Her Body Listening, my newest collection, is a poetic reflection of my final year in training as a Healing Touch practitioner. Poems grounded in the energetic body and written with rhythmic word associations reflect somatic wisdom and a deep listening tied to earth and spirit. Each poem evokes an awareness of healing and the subtle energies coursing through the body. Read more. Buy the book on BlazeVOX or Amazon.
Continental Drifts
This book is “always musically aware and syntactically limber, and it contains a large measure of improvisation and play….She creates kinetic writing that always surprises.” — Joseph Harrington
Morphs
The poetry of Morphs is comprised of a initial poem which I sent to Grant Jenkins with the instruction of morphing it in any way wanted. He sent me his morphed version for me to further morph. The book features 35 morphs and our conversation about what took place.
A limited number of signed copies are available. Contact me to purchase one.
Into Stillness
Kinetic poetry swirls historical fragments with dream, memory, flesh, violence, humor and ecstasy. In prose-like poems that surprise linguistically with their twists of meaning, Into Stillness explores the tension between self and other, existence and death, the word and its silence. Buy on Amazon.
Uncommon Grammar Cloth
This series of experimental poems, written in continuous prose-like paragraphs but with the rhythmic attentiveness of verse, allows the ever-shifting present to emerge like various threads of a fabric in the making. Familiar word patterns transmute suddenly with an associative leap or syntactic twist or a play on sound, enacting the sense of the body in motion, the self seeking the other, or catching glimpses of the divine. Buy on Amazon.
Chapbooks
The Phrase
A fabulist story about a young phrase that leaves home.
Declaration of Independence
The famous national document poetically recast through erasure and collage.
Poetry By Chocolate
A poetry collage made from the tantalizing text on chocolate wrappers.
Select Publications
Prose
Several articles on healing and ecosomatics in Spirituality & Health Magazine
“Bringing Ecosomatics to Yoga” in Yoga Magazine
“Taos Conversation” in Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices
“Poetry Saying,” Dispatches from the Poetry Wars, also in Zero Point Poesis
“Writing From the Body: A Blend of Intelligences” Multiple Intelligences Oasis
“Dancing Evolutionary Spirituality,” Dance, Movement & Spiritualities. Essay on Zen, Judaism, dance and somatics.
“The Essence of Forever,” This Land Press: how I fell in love with the work of T.C. Cannon
“Passing Over,” This Land Press: reflection on spirits and my cat in South Korea
“Write From the Body,” The Loft. A blog post about my somatic writing technique taught at The Loft.
“Torment Relieved in Song,” This Land Press, article about poet John Berryman
“Writing From the Body,” All Things Healing. Combining writing and movement to explore the language of the body .
“Gifting Poetry: Teaching Students to Read Poetry Closely,” Teachers & Writers. This essay led to an award as Bechtel Finalist.
AWP Pedagogy Papers
“Moving Into Writing,” Creativity Portal
Contact Quarterly
Natural Awakenings
Journal of Process-Oriented Psychology
ArtsInk
High Performance
Anthologies
“Dancing Evolutionary Spirituality,” Herstories:Call of the Soul in Dance Research, a collection of works by internationally recognized women leading the field of dance research and spirituality across the globe
“Embodying Change,” Hope Beneath Our Feet: Restoring Our Place in the Natural World. This anthology asks, “In a time of environmental crisis, how can we live right now?” Other contributors include Alice Walker and Barbara Kingsolver.
An Introduction to the Prose Poem ” “Yonder Zongs” A wide range of models and stategies for the prose poetry. Contributors include Margaret Atwood, Russell Edson and Pablo Neruda
“A Declaration of Independence,” Letters to the World. An anthology with contributors from Wom-po, The Discussion of Women’s Poetry LISTSERV, founded by Annie Finch. A bountiful collection of writers including Camille Dunghy, Eve Enszer, Allison Hedge Coke.
“The Pizza,” Food for Thought. Writing about food by contributors such as Herman Melville, Charles Simic, and Marge Piercy.
“A Neighborhood Bar,” Inspired by Drink. Writing about drinks by contributors such as Edgar Allen Poe, John Updike, and Daisetz T. Suzuki.
Fiction
These are often dream-like, surreal metarealities that in fictive terms tell the truth in their own slanted way. My fiction has been featured in…
“Standing” Parhelion Magazine
“Breakthrough,” Cafe Irreal
Confrontation
Oxford Magazine
“A Touchy Situation,” Cafe Irreal
Ambit
Pleasant Living
The Crescent Review
Convolvulus
Minds in Motion
The New Rain
“Until Death Do They Part,” Gargoyle
Reviews of artists
Many other artists at Style Weekly
Poetry
Several poems at Empty Mirror
Several poems at Spacecraft Project
Women’s Studies Quarterly
“Conterminous, Gridded, Deaggregated, and Uncertain,” Tarpaulin Sky
Fence
“Heenayni,” No Tell Motel
“Ground in what flows through,” No Tell Motel
“Panting,” No Tell Motel
“Ten or more suggestions,” No Tell Motel
“Fear in the Reveal,” No Tell Motel
Cue: A Journal of Prose Poetry
An excerpt from “Into Stillness,” HOW2
“Yonder Zongs,” Moria
“Freaking Fricatives,” Moria
“Entry Steps,” Moria
Homonumous: Magazine D’Avant Garde
An excerpt from “Uncommon Grammar Cloth,” DC Poetry Anthology
NYQ
Sleeping Fish
Lyric
Coe Review
“Blue Poets in a Red State: A Linked Verse,” Big Bridge
Wormwood Review