NEWS: Pearl Stitch, Poetry by Petra Kuppers, Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2016

a white woman sticking out her tongue, covered in a white stocking, on the book cover

This poetry book collects the various inquiries initiated in Spherical, Under the Echo, and FEDPP, fed by juicy creative/critical/activist work with the Arnieville Collective, Denise Leto, Amber DiPietra, Eleni Stecopoulos, the Somatic, Writing and Movement symposium, tangos with Stephanie Heit, inquiries with Rob Halpern and the other folks from the non-site collective, Olimpias Summer Retreats in Sierraville, and more.

Some glimpses and sound-bytes of recent material from Pearl Stitch (see also links below):

Tango Series, in PANK (2015)

Subtitled Video from a passage of PearlStitch: Arnieville.

Chapbook: Under the Echo

a handmade chapbook, edition of 100. Photography and construction by Lisa Steichmann, Poetry by Petra Kuppers. riverdog press @2012

'let me speak with my liver' and an image of underwater plants'fall from the sky and dance/an empress in a bunny suit' an image of the sky shot from under water

Journey: Pearl Stitch

The chapbook emerged from the song cycle Spherical, which began its journey at an Olimpias disability culture retreat at Sierra Hot Springs and developed through a series of somatics workshops and performances in California, Australia and Michigan in what became Pearl Stitch. Lisa shot the photos underwater in Pickerel Lake, where we swim like Amazons in the cold spring water.
Pearl Stitch was part of the FEDPP Project (feminism, embodiment, disability, poetry and performance), in which we explored the heritage of feminist poetics and its love for, though, and with our bodyminds.

for a different part of Pearl Stitch, hear this soundpoem, created by opera singer Misha Penton, poetry Petra Kuppers (textsound, Vol. 12, 2012)

Other parts of Pearl Stitch have been published in Beauty is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability, and in Streetnotes: Ethnography, Poetry and the Documentary Experience.

An editorial collective intriguingly deformed Pearl Stitch-infused writing (DIY: what can you do for yourself? The Poeti(x) of Disability Activism) in the journal Epistemologies.

Research Project: FEDPP (feminism, embodiment, disability, poetry and performance)

For a discussion of the creation of the FEDPP project, there's a journal article:

Petra Kuppers: ‘Poetry-ing: Feminist Disability Aesthetics and Poetry Communities.’ English Language Notes, special issue on The Shape of the I. 49:2, Fall/Winter 2011. 73:82.

A Radiant Approaching Video Poem

two women facing each other, holding their own throats, the word 'pulse' between them

And finally, here is a video collaboration that emerged out of the FEDPP Project, with Denise Leto:

A Radiant Approaching 3 mins, 2013. (audio described version, and second audio description version, focusing on the words projected onto skin, and creating sound effects to go along with audio description, both versions created by Melissa Herskowitz, Adrienne Chiu, and Lacie Turnbell. English 317: Disability Culture, Fall 2013 class, University of Michigan)

A meditation on language, skin, speech difference, and communication. Fragments of longing, belonging and being in place, with lines of Robert Kelly's Mont Blanc, Linda Norton's The Public Gardens, and James Thomas Stevens' and Caroline Sinavaiana's collaboration Mohawk/Samoa: Transmigrations.

the naked back of a woman with text runnning across it: Samoan and English words, hard to make out, a canoe, a subtitle reads 'nothing for movement alone'

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