Her Read: A Graphic Poem

Her Read: A Graphic Poem is a hybrid text at once poetry and visual art. In the tradition of reusing canvases, Steinorth takes a seminal text, The Meaning of Art by Herbert Read and with the liberal use of correction fluid, scalpel and embroidery floss, transforms the book from art criticism into feminist verse. Though the maternal body appears with frequency in Read's illustrated text which spans from prehistory to the modern age, he includes zero female artists. Her Read: A Graphic Poem is an excavation of buried voices, a reclamation of bodies framed in gilt and an homage to those whose arts remain unsung.


About the Author
Jennifer Sperry Steinorth's books include A Wake with Nine Shades (2019) and Her Read, A Graphic Poem (2021), recipient of Foreword Review's bronze prize in poetry and Texas Institute of Letters' Fred Whitehead Award for Design. She lectures at the University of Michigan and is a 2023-2024 Beinecke Fellow at Yale, conducting research for a biography of C.D. Wright. Her poetry has appeared in The Cincinnati Review, Denver Quarterly Review, Kenyon Review, Missouri Review, Pleiades, Plume, TriQuarterly and elsewhere.