as a compliment
wretched farm
disco
calamity
Artist Statement:
These pieces are part of a larger project, hem, a visual response to Ovid’s Metamorphoses. They started as a companion & counterpoint to Girl in a Bear Suit, focused on bringing high femme diction to the sometimes overwhelmingly patriarchal Metamorphoses.
Jen Jabaily-Blackburn is the author of the full-length collection Girl in a Bear Suit (Elixir Press, 2024) and the e-chapbook, Disambiguation (Salamander/Suffolk University, 2024). She is the winner of the Louisa Solano Memorial Emerging Poet Award from Salamander, selected by Stephanie Burt. Her recent work has appeared in or is coming soon from The Common, On the Seawall, SIR, Arkansas International, Palette Poetry, Salamander, Fugue, and Banshee. Her poems have twice been selected for Best New Poets. She is at work on a series of mixed-media blackout poems, hem, drawn from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Originally from the Boston area, she now lives in Western Massachusetts with her family. In 2024, she joined the advisory board of Perugia Press, and she is an associate editor of Nine Syllables Press, housed at Smith College, where she is the Program & Outreach coordinator for the Boutelle-Day Poetry Center. More at jenjabailyblackburn.com.