The Year of the Institution

This small performance will be a piece of a 3-part project. It is tied to a full-length poetry manuscript and a 2-woman show. The manuscript, titled “The Year of the Institution”, is a collection of poems exploring the institutions that humans exist in everyday. The poetry explores issues as large as prison, and as small as the heart- all from the lens of a woman. The value in it being performance poetry is the strategic use of one voice and one personal narrative. / / The 2-woman show, tentatively titled “Through the Lions Mouth”, is based around a similar principal. With Sasha Banks (a Fort Worth, TX based performance poet) and Kaycee Filson (a New Orleans based director), we have created a show based around the power in femininity and what it means to be a woman human in America. / / Through my lens of a poor, white woman, I have had the privilege to explore power dynamics in a way that many people will never have the opportunity to. / / The goal of the project is to put a creative personal narrative behind a large sociological concept (the narrative of a woman inside of masculine institutions). The value in it being in a creative, performance poetry venue, is that a larger narrative gets funneled through one voice. / / The presentation created for UNO will be a condensed version of the 2 projects. / / I have been teaching and performing poetry since 2010, and I would be honored to use my voice in my local community.