From “Her Read”

Artist statement: “This sequence is an excerpt from Her Read, a graphic poem, forthcoming from Texas Review Press in spring of 2021. The text is a facsimile of an artifact: the radical remodel of The Meaning of Art (Faber & Faber, 1931) by British cultural critic Herbert Read. Though the maternal body appears with frequency in this scholarship that explores art from prehistory through the modern era, zero womxn artists are named until the third edition in 1951, and then, but one –– Barbara Hepworth. I began this makeover the summer of 2016, in that pre-election heat, finding myself otherwise unable to write. From the voice of the male critic surveying male bodies of work, I began excavating a first-person female lyric, the imagined voices of unsung womxn artists and those framed in gilt. Materials: source text, correction fluid, inks, florist tissue, window shades, vellum, embroidery floss.” – Jennifer Sperry Steinorth

Some Flights (transcription of pages 164–165)

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Jennifer Sperry Steinorth is a poet, educator, interdisciplinary artist, and licensed builder. The author of A Wake with Nine Shades (2019), finalist for Foreword Reviews Best of the Indie Press Award; Forking the Swift (2009); and Her Read, a graphic poem (2021). She has received grants from Vermont Studio Center, the Sewanee Writers Conference, and the MFA for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Beloit Poetry Journal, Black Warrior, Cincinnati Review, Mid-American Review, The Missouri Review, New Ohio Review, Poetry Northwest, Rhino, and elsewhere. Her visual art has appeared at the Woman Made Gallery in Chicago and Oliver Arts Center in Michigan. She is an alumna of Interlochen Arts Academy, where she majored in dance, and she teaches writing at Northwestern Michigan College. Connect @ jennifersperrysteinorth.com.

Her Read, a graphic poem is available for preorder via Texas Review Press here.