Poem + RIP: kari edwards

I just learned that kari edwards (1954-2006) passed away this weekend. She was an important experimental poet and a longtime dynamic transgender/body disruption activist. After hearing about her and her work for several years, we finally met a couple times at different readings, though I never had an opportunity to sit down with her and talk about her work. During the first year of this blog, I linked up to one of her blogs, Transdada, though she ran several others, including Transsubmutation and In Words. She published a number of books, including Obedience (factorybooks, 2005) and a day in the life of p (A a Arts, 2002), and appeared in a range of anthologies, including most recently Biting the Error: 40 Writers Explore Narrative (Coach House, 2004), Best American Poetry 2004 (Simon & Schuster, 2004) and Bisexuality and Transgenderism (The Haworth Press, 2004).

In its most recent email, the Poetry Project included a selection from her book Obedience, which I'll reprint here:

this is duration


this is an indefinite continuation


this is a continuation of the indefinite


this is a claim number’s damp residue sealed dream


this is tomorrow’s tomorrow -
wandering in a murmur of midnight


this is duration spark


and this is duration on the edge of intimacy


this could be the sound of a child’s cry


the body that becomes ecstasy

Copyright © kari edwards, 2004, 2006.