I hold an MFA in Poetry from New York University. 

Excerpted from my manuscript Ghosts I Count

War chases war in the quietude,
just as birth burns despite the body’s exhaustion
Childbirth is our battle Spero finger-painted
on a pennant I return to
in the seventh hour
where the body expels itself

Standing in the clearing of my own making
where the barefooted muse
asks what dislocated hour wakes me?
In this eerie stillness where we are but phantoms
will the poet’s mural endure the nightmare
of a decimated now, where mothers beget children underground
as the foliage cedes to occupation
and the wind is a prisoner in its native land

Our hearts are tentacles transmitting light
she says, language impregnates earth
and we are all children spurred from dirt
We wake inside a gasoline dream
and yet we carry the hazelnut between our breasts
I was born into the century of suffering
I was carried in on the ailerons of verse
I was carried out on the pine's lowly dirge

RESEARCHER / TEACHER

I am an interdisciplinary PhD student at the University of Ljubljana. 

Situated in the field of Balkan Studies, my work is founded in the scholarship of reproductive anthropology, maternal healthcare, biopower, postcoloniality, and experimental ethnography. 

I co-lead a generative poetry workshop titled Poetry, Consciousness, Birth. 

The workshop focuses on the intersections between poetry, theory, creativity, and birth.

“This workshop is open to anyone who is interested in processes of transformation that set the stage for moments of acute insight. In this two-hour workshop we will explore how physiological changes become pathways to access altered states. Along the way, we will chart parallels in the manner in which undisturbed childbirth and acts of creation have been co-opted by mechanistic and capitalistic worldviews emphasizing production over process. In the spirit of maintaining our creative agency, we summon the cosmic from the quotidian. Proprioceptively, we come into our bodies as they are, and through verbal, aural and visual cues, venture along an inward trajectory that brings us deep into our innate poetic capacity, for we are natura naturans: “nature doing what nature does.”

Please inquire if you would like to host this workshop

HYPNOBIRTHING®

           

My vision is to support life givers in moving towards a mindful, dignified and emotionally fulfilled birth.

  

HypnoBirthing® is a childbirth technique and philosophy that focuses on fear release and deep relaxation.

Beyond being an evidenced-based childbirth education class, HypnoBirthing® looks at the relationship between mind and body, exploring how our thoughts shape our experiences, and consequently our births. Through breathing, visualization, and self-hypnosis, HypnoBirthing® supports you in birthing instinctively and without fear.