Editor’s Introduction

“Blood is thicker than water.”

That expression came sliding towards me, slowly, like mud. On a spiritual level the moment I heard the title of this exhibit, Thick as Mud, I felt that the poets I would select to respond to the work would need to be those who practice reaching the soul of a moment, not summarizing life or art, but able to find a tender place in what they see. Each of them succeeded.

Ekphrastic art is the response that a musician, essayist, dancer, or poet may use to celebrate a piece of visual art that moves them to speak it into the world in a different form. I selected seven poets, who in addition to myself, would be paired with one of the eight visual artists in the exhibition. Each of us were allowed to move together and separately through the galleries in order to find the individual piece that called us to write about it. The process of choosing an artist whose work you might linger with the longest requires slowing down, it requires finding the moment of mud within yourself. The moment of mud is a place of creation when what you know and bring to the world through the clay and water of your being, your culture, your sorrows and tenacity finds its way through you to the page. These eight poems are what each writer has sculpted and woven through words; they are the images moving and still which I hope will add to how you interpret what it means to see and to be, Thick as Mud.

Jourdan Imani Keith

Thick as Mud Interpretive Guide Curator and Editor Seattle Civic Poet 2019-2022