Profile
Kristin Prevallet is a poet, scholar, eco somatic practitioner, and critic whose research and teaching interests include 20th and 21st century experimental poetry and poetics with an emphasis on language's relationship to the somatic (body), EcoSomatic poetics, Ecolinguistics, The Feminist Avant-garde, The Ballad Tradition, Cross-cultural Poetics, Black Arts, Documentary and Investigative Poetics, Cross-Genre Texts, Ekphrastic forms, Procedural & Constraint-based Poetics, and Community circles.
Prevallet's unique pedagogy is an integration of somatic exercises and experiential approaches to the text as both a receptive and generative body. Her classroom is a site-specific space which challenges students to read, write and think from an embodied state that encourages process, error, and an acknowledgement of precarity in each other's lives. Her students are exposed to immersive in-class activities such as the poetry walk (circumnaviting the neighborhood, stopping to write into an evolving poem), writing-in-zones to reveal the felt-experience of a text or work of art, and immersive feedback salons which invite deep listening.
Prevallet received her PhD from the University of Gloucestershire (UK) and her MA from the University of Buffalo. Her poetic work casts a wide net to include archival and feminist 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 and facilitates a salons and conversations around Trance Poetics (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
Recent Publications
Recent and Forthcoming:
Kristin Prevallet and Yamuna Sangarasivam, “War Prompts: I Remember” in Paideuma: Modern and Contemporary Poetry and Poetics (forthcoming summer 2022).
"Yellow, orange, circular, shifts shape towards freedom: a precarious crossing of art and therapy," Forecast Journal (Los Angeles), forthcoming 2023.
“ParticalParticularFieldPoetics,” in The Body In Language edited by Edwin Torres, Denver, Co: Counterpath Press, 2019.
“Kristin Prevallet in conversation with John Sims,” The Brooklyn Rail, Summer 2021.
“To Dance is to Preposition,” Currents – Journal of the Body-Mind Centering Association, Spring 2021
“Kristin Prevallet in conversation with Theodore Harris,” Bomb, Spring 2020.
“All the Lord’s Women, Bardonia, NY: Mom Egg Review, (Vol. 16), 2018.
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.
“The Mother Maker” in Letters to the World: Poems from the Wom-Po Listserv, edited by Moira Richards, Rosemary Starace, Lesley Wheeler. Red Hen 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)
TrancePoetics: Wide Reality Books, 2018
Visualize Comfort: Healing and the Unconscious Mind, Wide Reality Books, 2017
Essays
“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.
“The Art of Discognitive Communication,” Evening Will Come, Winter 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 2022, Prevallet has performed her work in many art and cultural spaces including 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:
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 with an emphasis on language's relationship to the somatic (body), Eco Somatic poetics, Speculative Ethnography, Ecolinguistics, The Feminist Avant-garde, The Ballad Tradition, Cross-cultural Poetics, Black Arts, Documentary and Investigative Poetics, Cross-Genre Texts, Ekphrastic forms, Procedural & Constraint-based Poetics, Projects of Community and Collaboration.
Awards And Honors
Prevallet has received awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts, PEN America, the Academy of American Poets, Bowery Arts, the National Poetry Foundation, and the Mellon Foundation.