Both art and poetry attempt to give life to what I call the haiku moment, a moment of heightened awareness or insight. It is a quest that is exhilarating, challenging, sometimes transcendent, sometimes barely within grasp, as reflected in the opening lines from my poem titled “Violin.”

I am master only of the skewed rows of purple iris
at the moment I plant them.

With my words I strive to create visual images that are both literal and metaphorical, layering in levels of meaning that will add colour and texture within my poems.

My visual art is often figurative – incorporating the human form and the “body language” that we humans express. The subtleness of a glance, the angle of a hip or the twist of a wrist, a wry smile, or the flat-footed stubbornness of a turned back all create an unspoken form of expression.

So too, in my poetry, I use the body as a guiding metaphor – sensuality, sexuality, the rhythms of the body, our place in nature and nature’s implosion.

Rhythm and music have always influenced my poetry. Those elements became even more integral when I became involved in poetry-music collaboration. The rhythms of my poetry changed, became more syncopated. Just as musicians improvise while using established musical “tools,” so my poems, built on a repertoire of poetic techniques, were pushed in new, exploratory directions – words and phrases became changed, broken, restructured.

Music also often influences my visual pieces. A particular tone, the phrase of a song, or the percussive beat of a drum can sometimes lead to an unexpected synchronicity.

My word-art attempts to capture stories and images through language, while my visual art attempts to capture stories and images through a non-verbal language. It is through the layering of meaning and saturated hues, rhythm and texture that the poet and the artist create a three dimensionality in which the viewer or reader can immerse themselves.

Still, I am often left wanting more, wanting a way to go deeper still, as expressed in the closing lines of the poem “Violin.”

I crave the words
that open the throats of mannequins
and turn papier-maché faces to flesh.