Stephanie Heit is a poet, dancer, and teacher of somatic writing, contemplative dance practice, and kundalini yoga. She lives with bipolar disorder and is a member of the Olimpias, an international disability-performance collective. She lives in Ypsilanti with her partner and collaborator, Petra Kuppers. The "Color She Gave Gravity," is her first book. Join her at 7 p.m. on June 8 at Common Language Bookstore in Ann Arbor to celebrate with a reading, reception, and book signing.
"The Color She Gave Gravity," traces longing for connection between women. The book is described as an ecopoetics of the bodymind, these poems take us inside a dance inside an imaginary city inside sculpted spaces inside the insomniac body inside sister grief inside she. The work emerges from a landscape of somatic engagement and by experiences of psychiatric systems and multiple hospitalizations.
American poet Airea D. Matthews said, "
"Stephanie Heit has choreographed, in her first full-length poetry collection, a deeply engaging articulation of the interplay between mental illness and the creative instinct, history and destiny, and limitation and willful boundary. Here, we have an author brave enough to say 'I suffer' and talented enough to excavate the lyrical beauty of that suffering. 'The Color She Gave Gravity' offers the reader a textured view of a graceful body torn between trying to remember and trying to forget."
For more information about the event at 317 Braun Court, call 734-663-0036 or email [email protected].
