Profile
K (Kristin) Prevallet is a poet, scholar and somatic practitioner whose research and teaching interests include 20th and 21st century experimental poetry and poetics with an emphasis on ecosomatic and ecolinguistic poetics, avant-garde poetry and practice, music and rhythmic traditions, and documentary/investigative poetics.
Prevallet's pedagogy is trauma-informed; she encourages process, error, and an acknowledgement of economic, neuro-divergent, and social precarity among cultural bodies. Her students are exposed to immersive in-class activities such as the poetry walk, writing-in-zones, and immersive feedback salons which invite deep listening.
Her work casts a wide net to include archival recovery work (A Helen Adam Reader), performance art (OilOilOil), collaborative editing projects (apex of the M, Third Mind), and collaborations with visual artists. Prevallet is a legacy member of the Belladonna* Collaborative, a feminist poetry collective and event series; she facilitates a salons and conversations around Trance Poetics (www.trancepoetics.com).
Degrees Held
PhD, University of Glouchestershire, U.K.
M.A. Poetics and Media Study, University of Buffalo.
B.A. English, University of Colorado, Boulder.
Professional Affiliation
Association of Writing Programs (AWP)
Modern Language Association (MLA)
International Association of Therapists and Counselors
Society for General Semantics
Recent Publications
Recent and Forthcoming:
"Here where we hold each other dearly." Other Influences: Essays on Feminist Avant-garde Poetic Lineages edited by Marcella Durand and Jennifer Firestone. MIT Press (forthcoming, Spring 2024).
"A Syntactical Drip," Forecast Journal (Los Angeles), 2023.
“Conjure Purge Release,” Peripheries, Harvard Divinity School, Cambridge, MA: 2020.
Kristin Prevallet and Yamuna Sangarasivam, “War Prompts: I Remember.” Paideuma: Modern and Contemporary Poetry and Poetics, University of Maine: 2022.
“ParticalParticularFieldPoetics.” The Body In Language edited by Edwin Torres, Denver, Co: Counterpath Press, 2019.
“John Sims interviewed by Kristin Prevallet.” The Brooklyn Rail, Summer 2021.
“To Dance is to Preposition,” Currents – Journal of the Body-Mind Centering Association, Spring 2021
“Theodore Harris interviewed by Kristin Prevallet.” Bomb, Spring 2020.
"A Glassful of Tea and Sugar in the Mouth." New Republic, February 2016.
"I Live in a Borrowed and Often Tender Multiplicity." Boston Review, April 2015.
“The Primordial Cry: caraballo-farman interviewed by Kristin Prevallet.” Bomb, 2009.
Books (Poetry)
Everywhere Here and in Brooklyn (A Four Quartets). Brooklyn, NY: Belladonna.
I, Afterlife: Essay in Mourning Time. Athens, Ohio: Essay Press.
D’un Devenir Fantôme: Formes poétiques en temps de deuil. Translated by Emmanuel Hocquard, Juliette Valéry, Sarah Riggs, Omar Berrada, and David Lespiau, Pascal Poyet. Marseilles, France: Un bureau sur l’Atlantique at cipM.
Shadow, Evidence, Intelligence. Chicago, IL: Factory School.
Scratch Sides: Poetry, Documentation, and Image-Text Projects. Austin, TX: Skanky Possum Press.
Perturbation, My Sister. Lawrence, KS: First Intensity Press.
Chapbooks (Poetry)
Alter, Body. Propolis Press.
I, Elegy. Sausalito, CA: Duraton Press.
Fallen Left Behind: Forms for Elegy. Boston, MA: A.bacus Series #153.
Emulation Etudes. New Haven, CT: Phylum Press.
Red. San Francisco, CA: Second Story Books.
Inside the Belly of the Iceman. Portland, ME: OASIA Broadside Series #84.
Selections from The Parasite Poems. Cambridge, UK: Barque Press.
Lead, Glass, and Poppy. Washington, DC: Primitive Publications.
28 for the Road. Buffalo, NY: Meow Press.
Poetry Published in A n t h o l o g i e s
“Whose Hearts are Pure Gold,” in A Season in Carcosa edited by Joseph Pulver, Lakeland, FL: Miskatonic River Press.
Selection from I, Afterlife in The Alchemist’s Mind: A Book of Narrative Prose Poetry edited by David Miller. Reality Street.
“Quadrant.” Rhythm of Strucutre: Mathametics, Art, and Poetic Reflection edited by John Sims, Bowery Books.
“Dream of Financial Ruin.” A Best of Fence: The First Nine Years, Vol. 1, edited by Rebecca Wolff et al. Fence Books.
“The Mother Maker” in Letters to the World, edited by Moira Richards, Rosemary Starace, Lesley Wheeler. Red Hen Press.
“Apostrophe” in Women Poets on Mentorship: Efforts & Affections. Edited by Arielle Greenberg & Rachel Zucker. University of Iowa Press.
“Asteroid” in Poets on Painters, edited by Katie Geha and Travis Nichols. Wichita, KS: Ulrich Museum of Art at Wichita State University.
“Spool Speech.” Vertov from Z to A. Edited by Keith Sanborn and Peggy Ahwesh. Édiciones la calavera.
“Cruelty and Conquest” in Bowery Women, edited by Bob Holman and Marjorie Tesser. New York, NY: Bowery Arts and Science Editions.
“Apostrophe” (translated by Éric Athenot) in Whitman Hom(m)age 2005/1855, edited by Olivier Brossard and Éric Athenot. Nantes, France: joca seria press.
Books (Non-Fiction)
Medicines of Language: Ecosomatic Poetics and Embodied Practice (forthcoming Station Hill Press, summer 2024.)
Visualize Comfort: Healing and the Unconscious Mind.
Edited collections
A Helen Adam Reader, National Poetry Foundation.
Third Mind: Creative Writing Through Visual Art (co-edited with Tonya Foster). Teachers & Writer's Collaborative.
Essays and reviews
“Commonplaces: Locating Writing in Place.” We Drown Our Book: Conceptual Writing By Women. Edited by Vanessa Place. University of Iowa Press, 2013.
“Blood on the Illusion: The Violent Side Effects of Capitalism,” Fourth Genre, Vol. 14, No. 1, Spring 2012.
“’We Sit Like Hot Stones’: The Performance of Mourning,” The Brooklyn Rail, February 2010.
“The Fulfillment of Rhetoric.” Poets on Teaching. Edited by Joshua Marie Wilkinson. University of Iowa Press, 2010.
“One Among Rubble: George Oppen and World War II.” Thinking Poetics: Essays on George Oppen. Edited by Steve Shoemaker. University of Alabama Press, 2009.
“Risking It: Poetry, Teaching, Translation.” Vancouver, B.C.: The Journal of Scholarly Publishing,Spring 2004.
Writing is Never by Itself Alone: Six Mini Essays on Investigative Poetics,” New York, NY: Fence, Spring 2003.
Performances and Appearances
Between 1998 and 2023, Prevallet has performed in many art and cultural spaces including The Guggenheim Museum, The Bowery Poetry Club, The Museum of Modern Art/ PS1, The Segue Series, The Drawing Center, The Whitney Museum of Contemporary Art, Belladonna Series at Bluestockings Bookstore, and the New York Public Library.
Academic readings include St. Mary’s College, Brown University, Columbia University, New York University, Barnard College, The Woodbury Poetry Room at Harvard University, The John Asbury Series at Bard College, San Francisco State University, University of Illinois, University of Maine, West Point, and the CUNY Graduate Center.
Recent performances include:
Aperpheries: A multi-media soundscape with Peter Blum. Station Hill Intermedia Lab at Greenkill Gallery, Kingston, NY: 2021
Naropa University, Boulder Co. Summer Writing Program: July 2001; 2006; 2008; 2013; 2019
Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church: 1998, 2002, 2003, 2008, 2019
Center for Book Arts, 2002, 2008, 2018
Lectures and talks
In addition to poetry readings and performances, Prevallet has been invited to lecture on contemporary poetics and specifically Documentary Poetics, Somatic Poetics, and Trance Poetics at a variety of cultural instituations and universities including:
Columbia University, St. Mary’s College, CUNY Graduate Center, The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church, The Associated Writing Program's annual conference, The University of Michigan, Naropa University, The University of Maine, The Boston Poetry Conference, Small Press Traffic Talk Series, The University of Louisville, Spalding University, New York University, and The Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, Vancouver, B.C.
Research Interests
20th and 21st century experimental poetry and poetics; Trauma informed pedagogies and practices; Ecosomatic poetics and practice; Speculative Ethnography; Ecolinguistics; The Feminist Avant-garde; Rhythmic and Musical Traditions; Documentary/ Investigative Poetics.
Awards And Honors
Prevallet has received awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts, PEN America, the Academy of American Poets, Bowery Arts, Poets&Writers, The National Poetry Foundation, and the Mellon Foundation. Residencies include the Eliot House in Gloucester, MA, Le Centre international de poésie Marseille, PEN America Yangon, and Spalding University, to name a few.