Photo credit: Nancy Hightower 

My poems often study the boundarylessness of the human body, and how it exists at the nexus of history, place, and individual experience. I believe each poem works independently to prod, question, doubt, declare, observe, or confess. Cornel West questions, "How do you generate an elegance of earned self-togetherness so that you have a stick-to-it-ness in the face of the catastrophic and the calamitous and the horrendous and the scandalous and the monstrous?" To his list, I might add, "...and the mundane and the unlucky and the heartbreaking?" My creative process integrates a praxis of cross-disciplinary arts, experimentation, and play. I paint, take photographs, and tinker with carpentry as ways to think with my hands, to meditate. The work turns into poems. 

As an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, my teaching concentrates on the theory and craft of poetry, hybrid writing, and literary editing and publishing. In 2006, Stephanie Lenox and I founded the online literary journal, Blood Orange Review, which is now an integral part of the Washington State University editing and publishing program. I serve on the Blood Orange Review advisory board, and direct Atelier, a creative editing studio. 

If you have questions about my work, contact me.