a nonphilosophy of play

2021 - 2024, manuscript with poetry, performance score, and multimedia components

The book-length manuscript, a nonphilosophy of play, explores self-making and becoming as play, drawing from my conception of trans poetics, play theory, personal narrative, research and field notes, emotional landscapes, and relationships to self and others. Through poetry and performance score, I craft a becoming and unraveling, where my words slip into fluidity to break open the container of the familiar. I define trans poetics as a process–always relational–that disentangles signifier from signified and liberates gender into an expansive possibility of becoming (trans/forming). The performance scores create space in poetry for the relational aesthetics usually attributed to art. 

In my process, I create a container that enables play and extends a hand to others to become co-witnesses and participants. Interactive performance disrupts other media making it unstable and unpredictable. In the score, linx/vertigo, opt. 1, included in this manuscript, the reader is instructed to tie the document to a ceiling fan blade, turn on the fan, then chase it until they “either a) grasp it entirely or b) collapse.” This option is one of four performance scores for inducing vertigo. Through intentional disorientation, games of vertigo momentarily dissolve the sense of a stable self and reveal that play can be both fun and uncomfortable, dangerous or risky. Turning poetry into interactive media involves others in the meaning-making process, to learn and understand language through bodily exploration. 

Through my invitation for participation (de-classification of games), direct address (GUIDE), and annotations (winter/ PLAYING DEAD), I seek out the conversational in writing. My research is deeply internal, embodying what I learn about play and putting play into practice as a core value in my life. While my own experience of transformation through play forms a deep case study, it’s a necessary expansion of this research to consider how play can transform communities and heal division beyond the individual. My writing appears across media as a method to reaching out to others. I want readers to leave their fingerprints on my writing and I want live moments to change my poems.