Jay Besemer

poet, artist, fool

Statement

Jay Besemer’s work inhabits and engages the tense spaces where body meets land, selves meet society, illness meets expectation and language meets its own failure. In this constantly shifting setting, the poem itself is variably-embodied, and serves both maker and audience as a mode of processing and experiencing an increasingly precarious existence. Using and adapting a variety of working modes/media, he resists the pressure to stay safely categorized and legible. What is a poem? What is a performance? Who makes art? What counts? There are alway more answers, and more questions, to encounter.