I have a Masters of Fine Arts degree. In the past, this title didn't hold much weight. But I am finding more and more that this is the most important degree I could ever possess. Einstein said that "the fine arts are more important than science, though I can't explain why." I love that. We are entering a creative age, and it's the fine artists, the ones who can see between the spaces that will help everyone move through to whatever happens next.
I am the director of Asheville Wordfest. This is part of my practice, part of my olan tikkun, repairing of the world. I have faith in poetry as a healing force, as well as a corrective one. It is a means of discourse which by its very nature strives for accommodation of paradox and inclusion of many parts, each maintaining its integrity. I wrote my Masters thesis about this and I haven't seen the world the same way since.
I am an enormous fan of Sir Isaac Newton and Lao Tse.
I was raised in Canada, England and the United States. While growing up I backpacked in a Europe and Western Canada several times. I spent all my summers canoeing Georgian Bay, Ontario or hiking in the Appalachians. I lived in Australia for one year after graduation from Rollins College and I taught in China before I became a mother.
I am deeply informed by and about mysticism. I had to be. Poetry led me into it and when we enter another world, we have to learn its language or else go mad. I have done extensive research and reading in Shamanism, Jungian theory, Native American spirituality, Philosophy Eastern and Western and in Alchemy. I have read the world's major sacred texts and found the seed image and alchemical symbolism in all of them. Not because I wanted to prove anything but because it never made sense to me that religions wouldn't agree with another. I always had faith in their poetry, and knowing poetry helped me heal the split between them.
