Shakespeare's Shorts: Esther Lee, poet

F***ing Shakespeare

Esther Lee is a poet (and letter-press artist!) who, along with her husband and cat Bowie, lives on a 35-foot sailboat called “Hope.” Currently, they’re living off the coast of Jacksonville, Florida, where she writes poetry, blogs about her efforts at a zero-waste boat life, and occasionally takes phone calls from podcasters.

Spit, her debut collection, received both the Elixir Press Poetry Prize and Pushcart Prize nominations.

On today’s episode, Lee reads from her brand-new and beautiful collection of poetry out now from Conduit Books and Ephemera, Sacrificial Metal. These poems offer a meditation through the lens of dance and human movement about the quiet dignities and alienation of illness, caregiving, and living in a racialized body. Part documentary poetics, part mourning diary, part textual choreography, and part nautical-inspired elegy, the poems in Sacrificial Metal, serve as inquiries about how we may become socialized or exiled from a community, along with how movement and dance offer possibilities of interconnectedness with one’s own body and a sense of collective identity.

Find out more about Esther Lee and her amazing life’s work:

• EstherLee.io

• WayfindersNow.com

If you’re feeling extra curious, check out more about Rudolf van Laban’s fascinating distillations of dance and movement here.