Artist's Statement

For me writing is a way to interact with the world, to bring perception and language to bear on the events I see and the complex of emotional reality I go through. Making art is a process of transformation — I bring my body, my voice, my words and my being into a fast tango with the subject at hand: whether heart-hungry, yearning, tired, or excited, Something appears that was not there before: a record of a series of arranged accidents.

As to the form of the work, what determines whether it should be a poem, a play, a dialogue, a story, a novel? The breadth and length of the throw; the next challenge, what fits with the moment. Why you pick up blue, rather than red. When one is embarked on a long work, it's picking it up again and finding one's place in it, among characters and dilemmas going on in the story, rather like picking up a piece of knitting. Poems catch the immediacy of every day life, as can stories. But the germ of a story grows into something quite other than just the impetus, and the journey — going with and propelled by the narrative impulse — becomes absorbing.

photos by Sharon Arnold