Kristy Bowen : part one

A writer and book artist, Kristy Bowen is the author of many artist books, chapbooks, and zines, as well as several prose/poetry/hybrid collections, including the recent sex & violence (Black Lawrence Press, 2020.) Her poems have appeared recently in Pretty Owl Poetry, The Account, and Pedestal Magazine.  She lives in Chicago, where she runs dancing girl press & studio.

What are you working on?

Right around the holidays, I stumbled into my brother-in-law's comment string on a Facebook post from someone he'd been talking about a few day's prior--a guy who was pathologically into conspiracy theory and had some crazy thoughts about current events (at that moment it was the Nashville bombing). What caught my attention was not so much what he was saying, but HOW..this strange sequence of cause/effect and pattern-forming that had no basis in fact or reality and yet was captivating nonetheless. It occurred to me that in our own histories, we often make meaning and substance out of  our own lives and experience in a similar way. And if I could capture that diction and flowing way of talking about things--my own things--it might be an interesting experiment. I have a handful of pieces that I'm liking and hope to write some more. At my day job at the library, we are planning programming and exhibits around the subject of urban legends this semester, something I've written about quite a bit before,  and those ideas are also turning some similar wheels and creeping into the poems.