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.
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J, thanks so much for this. I knew kari edwards just through her blog and listserv participation and have been doing the strange kind of mourning one does for someone she can't say that she knows. The poetry helps.
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