"Art-making leads to art-making. I learned to write by writing."
J.C. Todd's (b. 1943) poems investigate the impact of war, with an insistent eye and ear on language. Her current project, War Zone, explores containments and outbursts of resistance, with sonnets that "complicate and contemporize the tradition of war poems." Todd's writing seeks out the tender moments that exist in contrast to devastation. "If language bears the trace of war, how can that be revealed and perhaps shaken loose?" she asks. Todd received her M.F.A. in creative writing from Warren Wilson College in 1990, and she has since taught at universities and in the Writers-in-the-Schools Program. Her works include What Space This Body (Wind Publications, 2008) as well as two chapbooks: Nightshade and Entering Pisces (Pine Press, 1995 and 1985, respectively). She's received fellowships and grants from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the Leeway Foundation, and the Latvian Cultural Capital Fund. Other honors include an International Artist Exchange Award from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and a scholarship to the Baltic Centre for Writers and Translators.
