The embodiment of poetics is much more than words falling onto the page; it is the long, sometimes grueling, and often ordinary spaces in between. It asks us to pay exquisite attention to the sound of spring returning, the desecration of communities and ecosystems, the songs of our ancestors ringing through the hallway of our bones, everything that has gone unspoken yet now must somehow be spoken. This is my sense of it, anyway. 

Beyond being a poet, my role is to listen to the many voices spilling over the body of the world. Anything that gets written down is a translation of what I overhear.

This devotion to listening has been shaped by the many wise elders, mentors, teachers, poets, storytellers, mystics, and visionary artisans for cultural change that I have been blessed to know and love and learn from for nearly two decades. It has been a wild and generous path honed by years of study with Animas Valley Institute, The Work That Reconnects, and Orphan Wisdom School, alongside apprenticeships to Red Tail Hawk, Sage, Sun, Wind, Water, Mountain, Deer, Grief, Beauty-Making, and Praise.

I have spent my entire life at the feet of The Great Colorado Rocky Mountains; it is a rugged and increasingly dry landscape that has claimed my heart and given grit to my writing. I am deeply informed by the pulsating stories of this place as well as the distant places from which my people originate. I live along the foothills of Lyons, Colorado in the Territory of the Cheyenne, Ute, and Arapaho with my husband, young daughter, mischievous dog, and wide web of kin.