kristy bowen | writer & book artist

When it comes to other mediums and genres that get spooky, poetry is perhaps the one that is both the shortest and the perhaps the most concentrated form horror can come in outside of an image. There isn't a lot of room for  jump scares and gore, or for stablishing creeping dread over hundreds of pages. Horror and other kinds of speculative poetry do something different, get under the skin in new ways and quickly. This demands precision, even when the overall feeling is one of fragmentation or fracture.  As I've been finishing up the CLOVEN series, which, while it takes its inspo from mythology, revels in horror and dark elements, particularly when it comes to the body, the female one specifically, and transformation. The folds of the story, the various veins and alternative endings, can create a sense of fracture and breaking that I am loving for that project.  The fracture of self could be be where a lot horror poetry lives and draws juice from. These sorts of movies ar...