a r t

dark truths: a back door to my mind

I started dabbling in writing blackout poetry over a decade ago in a messy Hawaiian art shed while living at a yoga retreat center. As someone who never felt the call to write poetry, this medium felt natural but also deeply mysterious. Each page I opened to, thick black marker ready, had a story to tell even I didn’t know yet. Certain words leapt out at me, and from there the poem unfolded, me chasing after it wildly, curiously, sometimes, fearfully. Sometimes they were about love. Sometimes they were about grief. Sometimes they were about travel, the road, the way the West gnawed at me. I loved writing them because in doing so I seemed to learn more about myself, for each poem revealed some deeper inner truth journaling alone couldn’t access. Blackout poetry became a backwards way of journaling for me, and thumbing through them now - dozens and dozens of them - I can sometimes connect with what I was going through at the time: who I had loved, what I had lost. Other times they were just dark truths on an old page, a stabbing sentence or two relatable, I like to think, for the human condition in us all.

While I’ve dreamed of someday selling some of my favorites, it was a project that always got pushed to the side. Something about my entry into new motherhood made my whole creative senses wake up and scream “what are you waiting for?” I recalled one of my most hauntingly favorite Mary Oliver quotes

““The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.””

— MARY OLIVER

So here they are. My first 5 poem series I like to call “Dark Truths.” I plan to launch five more every so often. Maybe you will connect with one or two. Maybe you will hang it on your wall amongst other poems or images that stir something in you. Maybe you will gift it for a friend. Maybe just browsing these will inspire you to pull a dusty book off your shelf and give it a whirl. Whatever it is, I just hope you feel seen by my words, from one human to the next. Just like my imagery, it’s all I hope to give.