kari edwards

• Name — kari edwards • Born — 2 December 1954 • Birthplace — Illinois • Died — 2 December 2006 • Place of death — San Francisco, California • Education — Naropa Institute • Field — Poetry, Sculpture, and Gender Activism • Partner — Frances Blau

edwards was born in 1954 in Illinois. She grew up in Westfield, New York, a town near Buffalo.:535 She received a BA in sculpture.:23 Early in her career, edwards was an artist, teaching sculpture and performance art at the University of Denver for 12 years. After she was denied tenure, edwards appealed and was granted it, but decided to change careers. She began working at a homeless shelter and teaching marginalized youth, while beginning to practice Zen. She also began taking estrogen to transition, and started a journal at the same time.:535

edwards enrolled at Naropa University for psychology but soon decided to become a writer, studying at the Jack Kerouac School.:535 Anne Waldman was one of her teachers, and Waldman's style of experimental poetry influenced edwards' future work. edwards published The Mandala of a Dharma Queen during an independent study, and wrote Post/(Pink), her first book, before graduating in 2000.:535 From Naropa, she earned an MA in psychology and an MFA in writing and poetics.

edwards was part of the New Narrative movement and a key member of the trans literary community.:23 Her poetry is often considered avant-garde due to its experimental aesthetics.:3 Her work explored themes on social constructs, identity and language, and gender nonconformity. edwards frequently signed books by crossing out her name and writing "NO GENDER", punctuating her stance that there is and should be no gender.:529 She was a gender activist and frequently spoke about trans issues, but did not want to be labeled a "transgender poet", or be confined by other labels.:24 edwards wrote that language was "oppressive" and "freezes identity" within an email to her friend Ellen Redbird.:32 She related gender and language in her works and in her commentary: "when you have a lack of language, you can make fun of it—things become funny. The joke is that it is all made up".:528-529:62 In a 2003 interview with poet Akilah Oliver, edwards said: edwards also claimed that "poetry attempts to get to a deeper truth by trying to describe the indescribable".:209 She said poetry can be "a tool for disruption, activism, acts of personal and public empowerment".:4 Drew McEnam writes that edwards "centered the inadequacy and restrictiveness of language as a vehicle for conveying complex and shifting identities, genders, histories, and affects".:178 Trace Peterson reviews edwards' poetry as having a common theme of showing how one's selfhood has multiple versions, shaped by social context including political influences like capitalism and oppression. edwards portrayed trans identity as "alternately embattled and unremarkable", and opposed writing queer literature or identity stories.:527-528 Brooke Ingram says edwards' "work offers readers a critique of the relationship between the producers and consumers of art and culture through experimentation with the structure and function of language’s normative meaning".:3 For Michelle Auerbach, edwards "bravely and gorgeously uses poetic gesticulation to describe and embrace the volatile spaces between illusion and reality. This negative capability, this ability to hold both the arduousness of existence and the possibilities is at last the deepest move of the spiritual".:214

After graduating from Naropa, edwards moved to San Francisco. She began the blog transdada, writing on poetics and politics. She was part of the poetry and LGBTQ communities of the city, and was committed to activism. edwards was the poetry editor of Transgender Tapestry from 2000-2005. She changed the scope of poetry published there, elevating avant-garde work by trans writers such as Julian Semilian, Oussama Zahr, Angela Dobbs-Sciortino, Julia Serano, Catherine Daly, Margaret Ricketts, Trace Peterson, and Trish Salah.:536

edwards' second book, a day in the life of p., was published by Subpress Collective in 2002 with the help of a former classmate, Isaac Jarnot.:535 It is presented in the form of a diary entry for the character p., who goes by many names and perspectives.:528 A posthumous book of edwards' poetry, succubus in my pocket, was published in 2015 by EOAGH: A Journal of the Arts. edwards finished the manuscript of succubus in 2004. After her death, her partner Fran Blau shared the manuscript with Trace Peterson, a friend of edwards' and the press editor of EOAGH.:38 Scholar Brooke Ingram describes the book as "a trans-genre text that challenges the authoritarian notion of identity through innumerable voices that enable the evasion of subjectivity" with "disorderly syntax and grammatical structure" that "illuminates the fundamental instability in the structures that establish and dictate the relationships between subjects and objects", especially by decentering "I" as a subject.:38-39 The collection won a 2016 Lambda Literary Award in the category of Transgender Poetry. She also authored having been blue for charity (BlazeVox: 2006); obedience (Factory School: 2005); iduna (O Books: 2003); a diary of lies, Belladonna #27 (Belladonna Books: 2002); and obLiqUE paRt(itON): colLABorationS (xPress(ed): 2002). edwards's work has appeared in numerous publications, such as anthologies Blood and Tears: Poems for Matthew Shepard, Painted leaf Press (2000), and Electric Spandex: anthology of writing the queer text (Pyriform Press: 2002). Her works have also been exhibited throughout the U.S.

edwards met her partner, Fran Blau, at Naropa University in 1996.:535 edwards had dyslexia.:529

She died of a pulmonary embolism, aged 52, on December 2, 2006. Naropa University Summer Writing Program established the kari edwards scholarship, an annual fund for poets who reshape form. The 2009 work No Gender: Reflections on the Life & Work of kari edwards discusses edwards' legacy.