Sherese FRancis
WELCOME TO THE SUNKWHOLIC (K)NUB!
Official Bio:
Sherese Francis (she/they) describes themselves as an AlkyMist of the I-Magination, finding expression through poetry, interdisciplinary arts (collage, book and paper arts, sound and performance art, text art), workshop facilitation, editing, and literary curation. Her(e) work takes inspiration from her(e) Afro-Caribbean heritage (Barbados and Dominica), and studies in Afrofuturism and Black Speculative Arts, mythology and etymology. Some of their work has been published in Women’s Studies Quarterly, Furious Flower, Obsidian, Rootwork Journal, The Caribbean Writer, The Operating System, Cosmonauts Avenue, No Dear, Apex Magazine, Bone Bouquet, African Voices, Newtown Literary, and Free Verse. Additionally, Sherese has published four chapbooks, Lucy’s Bone Scrolls (Three Legged Elephant, 2017), Variations on Sett/ling Seed/ling (Harlequin Creature, 2018), Recycling a Why That Rules Over My Sacred Sight (DoubleCross Press, 2021) and Lady Liberty Smashing Stones (THRASH Press, 2022), and edited a poetry anthology/guided journal, Baby Suggs and a Purple Butterfly (Get Fresh Books, 2024). Sherese won Inverted Syntax’s 2024 Aggrey Book Prize for Poetry for PollyNation: A Seminary of Self, which will be published in 2027.
Sherese has received grants and awards from Queens Council on the Arts, NYFA, NYSCA and The Caribbean Writer, residencies from WorksonWater, LMCC, Akademie Schloss Solitude and SeaSalted Honey in Senegal, and fellowships from Voodoonauts, Baldwin for the Arts and Anaphora Arts. Besides publications, Sherese has had her(e) work featured in various exhibitions and showcases from NY Live Arts, Queens Public Library, York College Arts Gallery, King Manor Museum, WorksOnWater, Flushing Town Hall, Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning, Bliss On Bliss, Maleza Proyectos, Flux Factory, The Rubenstein Art Center, The Loomis Chaffee School Mercy Gallery, Flux Factory, and Ely Center for Contemporary Art.
Artist Statement:
As a poet & interdisciplinary artist, my body of work involves experimenting with the fluidity of languages, forms and meanings. I employ wordplay and formplay for a polysemic, fully embodied understanding of text within itself and as a social practice. My work excavates and incorporates various etymologies, histories and myths, including from my background as a Afro-Caribbean-American writer, to create an environment for multilayered interpretation and interrogation of the self as a singular, static entity. Additionally, I use visual, mixed media and book arts to provide alternative expressions for this exploration. The purpose of my work is to create my own sacred text as a person in a black body.
FUTURISTICALLY ANCIENT Sample Experimental Word Theorizing:
The SynKWholic (K)Nub: RK/V-V/KR (Reimagining The Past Through PolySense = Manifesting The Future)
Represents a plurality of being
A versioning of the true essence of being.
SynKWholic: The Syncopating Syncretic. The Alter Of Sankofa. The Changing Same. The I’s Berg Beneath The SurFace Of The Ocean. The Ever Evolving Dynamism Within Creation. The Polyphonic Code. Put The Key, The Question, The Kinetic Into the Whole & Watch It All COME Together.
(K)Nub: The Wave & Particle. The Knob Of The Door & Its Turning. The Constant Revolving In-Between. The Portal. The Entering Of Space. As Within So Without. The Collective Breath of Time Organizing Into a Clou(n)d of Space. X Marks The Phantom Extension Where The Gold Is Found — InnerNeT.
RK/V-V/KR: To Be Both aRKiVe & Its ViKaR, The Incarnation of X-Change. The DuBuTy. To Truly See Is To Be Crossing Over. To Intersect. Guardian Of The SunKWholic (K)Nub. To Be aKeRV — The Horizon NeTting the Past, Present & Future — & VKR — The MaKing It VRK VRK VRK VRK Who Holds The Vision & Records It For All to See.
Reimagining The Past Through PolySense = Manifesting The Future: The Cyclical Time. The Plural Sense of Being. Present & Presence As A Plural Tense. Its Constant Ebb & Flow Between Past & Future That Makes the (K)NubSense — The Accumulation of All Knowing — The InnerNeT.
This is Has Been. Is. Will Continue To Be. A Futuristically Ancient Formula…Tune Yourself Into The Revelations of A (K)Nub.
Photo Credit: Rosalyn Fernandez
Sherese Francis 