Wryly T. McCutchen’s project for the 2020 Jack Straw Writer’s Program is part of a “drag-a-licious” show of “of weird, solo, interdisciplinary, poetry-fueled content.” In their conversation with curator Anastacia-Renée, they discuss the physical nature of their work, their destructive poetry practice, and the importance of sharing one’s work. “Poetry offers the opportunity to use language in this way that breaks it and messes it up. . . . And also there’s often an emphasis on what’s not there or what’s been taken out . . . it’s something that I’ve been thinking about, in terms of life values and political values, too. What do we build . . . what do we remove? What do we take down? What do we destroy?”

Wryly is a hybrid writer, community educator, and interdisciplinary performance artist. Their art centers on themes of body, loss, and spirit. They are trans, queer, and crazy; so too are all the glinting possibilities they slice into being. Wryly has lived most of their life on the unceded lands of the Puget Sound Salish peoples. Recipient of the Lil Elbe scholarship, Wryly attended LAMBDA Literary’s Emerging Writers Retreat as a Poetry Fellow in 2018. Their debut poetry collection My Ugly and Other Love Snarls, came out in 2017. Their work speaks directly (through the mouth) and moves abstractly (through the rest of the body and the spaces it inhabits). Wryly conjures multi-media, visceral experiences which challenge the harmful boundaries imposed by cisgender and heterosexual gatekeepers. This art resurrects trans ancestors and makes space for deep queer healing.

SoundPages was produced by Jack Straw Cultural Center as part of the Jack Straw Writers Program. All of the writers heard in this series are published in the Jack Straw Writers Anthology, and featured online at www.jackstraw.org. Music by SassyBlack, produced as part of the Jack Straw Artist Support Program.