I’m curating an interdisciplinary art space for the Florence Poetry Carnival this May. FloPoCarn 2020 will feature poetry games, a poetry carnival barker, flanerie, edible and foldable poetry. “Poetics of Repair” was inspired by my emergent relationship with a Snohomish elder, Michael Evans, who built a canoe with his father that they named the Blue Heron Canoe. The Blue Heron Canoe Family has traveled on many Tribal Canoe Journey (an annual, sacred journey of Indigenous cultural revival in the Pacific Northwest for several decades. Last fall a poem about a canoe came to me in a dream; my home was flooded to the second floor, trapping my sons and I in a room with one small window. Just as the water was rising over our knees, I looked out the window and saw a yellow canoe floating towards the window. We climbed out the window into the canoe to safety. This spring, it was as if the dream came to life. Our student and friend, Juan Carlos Valdez, put us in touch with Michael and learned that he wanted to bring the canoe to the Goddard College MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts residency. I believe that paddling together is a way we can repair our relationships with each other, settler and Indigenous, human and beyond-human beings, and between humans and our beloved earth/sky/oceans.
I’m seeking collaborators who feel called to this work of the “Poetics of Repair”.