Carrie Beyer’s project for the 2022 Jack Straw Program is a collection of poems in which she explores giving voice to church women who would normally be silenced. In her conversation with curator Michael Schmeltzer, they talk about the German-American Anabaptist community which inspired her project, the hidden soundtrack for survival and liberation in her writing, and the idea of “writing into descent.” “I think that type of honesty is something I really try to connect with in my poems. . . . That piece of conveying emotion, no matter how harrowing it may be, I think is an entrance to connecting with other people through art.”

Music by Ran Park, produced through the Jack Straw Artist Support Program.