Essay in Tarka Journal

 I have an essay titled "When Yoginis Appear With Animals: Animistic Relational Elements and the Non-Dual Matrix" in the "On Tantra" issue of Tarka Journal.

This was an important essay for me to write into and from the borderlands of lineage and memory in tantra, earth-based spirituality, and theory as healing.

While the text was written as a cross-genre invitation—and accepted by the journal as such—only the first part of the article appears in the print issue. As I write in the introduction to the text:

"The text brings together the academic and artistic modes in a process of a praxis that engages complexity and a both/and orientation towards epistemology. Its invitation to multiple perspectives becomes a stimulus to the reader to open a space of being that can mediate the gap between concepts and experience. The casting of the language of poetry enables meanings and responses to emerge that cannot be generated through academic prose alone."

Distinguished scholar of Indian art Vidya Dehejia had written to me about the poem sequence: "The poetry scares me—it is so powerful."

While reading the academic essay alone will bring forth only part of the meaning, gnosis, and critical knowledge I had intended when bringing two ways of writing in conversation, I hope you will still be stimulated by it.

Likewise, I hope one day poetry will receive its due recognition in mainstream academic conversations for the ways of knowing and the epistemic encounters it enables and fosters. I hope poet-scholars will continue to create from that exigency.

UPDATE: I heard back that Tarka is working to make the article available in its totality in the online version of the issue on tarkajournal.com.

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