MOTHER IS A BODY - Brandi Katherine Herrera

Sonic and typographic experimentation collide in this book-length poem in seven sections. MOTHER IS A BODY is a visceral and immediate exploration of the female body, and that which is continually forced upon it, as Herrera considers what it means to be mothered, and to mother in return. 

Through a cyclical process of imagining, conceiving, assigning, emptying, MOTHER IS A BODY at once renounces and reveres the notion of the sacred feminine, to illustrate “mother” in her many actualities — a complex figure, at times unsightly, that both is and isn’t what we most often ascribe to her as an archetype of the divine.  

Overseen by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Clarice Lispector, Miriam Medrez, and Yoko Ono, Herrera pieces together material excavated from within Instagram’s endless scroll, Wikipedia’s citations, and even the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s archives to create a layered inscription — musically, emotionally, philosophically —  to the idea of motherhood, and the children she never had.

About Brandi Katherine Herrera

Brandi Katherine Herrera is an artist whose work in text, image, and sound explores the poetics of color and space. She is the author of Mutterfarbe and Natürlicher, (Broken Cloud Press, 2016); a co-author of MAR (Lute & Cleat, 2018); and co-editor of The Lake Rises (Stockport Flats, 2013). Her work is held in the Seattle Art Museum’s permanent collection, Yale University’s Faber Birren Collection, UCLA’s Louise M. Darling Archive, University at Buffalo’s Poetry Collection, and Reed College’s Special Collections & Archives, and has been featured by the Seattle Art Museum, Cube Gallery, 23 Sandy Gallery, Poetry Press Week, The Volta, Octopus Magazine, The Common, Poor Claudia, Word/For Word, and Borderlands Texas Poetry Review, among others.