The Sun Gathers Form: A Prompt Poem for Poetry Month 2026

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For this year’s poetry month in April the wonderful online literary journal, Epistemic Lit, held a one-sentence poem contest. A one-word prompt was shared online each day and participants posted their entries on social media.

I started the month strong, but then had a PSC flare on April 5 and ended up hospitalized by April 20th. I was very sick, but writing a one-sentence poem almost every day felt possible. Honestly, I think the process kept me sane through the entire month’s health ordeal.

Four of my one-sentence poems were chosen for their special poetry month edition. You can read—and hear—all 30 winners here: https://epistemiclit.com/nationalpoetrymonth-one/

Most Canadian literary magazines don’t accept previously published work—including pieces shared on social media—so I decided to edit my 30 one-sentence poems into one long poem and share it here. You may find some symptomatology writing in this piece given just how sick I was while I was writing some of the entries.

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Crip Time is Usually Not Writing Time

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A post on why I’ve been neglecting my blog.

My Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis (PSC) has progressed to the point where some of my flares require long hospitalizations, more IV antibiotics, and ERCPs. I’ve been much sicker for much longer, and sometimes I don’t even have the focus to do much embroidery.

A red & purple organza liver basted onto grey linen. The biliary system with all its branches between the two layers of organza is filled with bilious green. There are small yellow beads on the biliary system inside the smaller lobe. There are white beads sewn on the narrow end of the top organza liver. An arched T shape filled with tight crisscrossing stitches in thick off-white thread separates the large & small lobes of the liver and curves over the top. There are various blocks of text stitched in light grey single strand thread around the image. Some of them are cut off in this photo. They read: roots grow in us. through our landscapes. plexuses. fleshy beasts tethered. By fluid and ligaments. Such a gentle embrace. Beneath our skin. Here is the thing. Laid open. The spells it. A language. Between. this golden ingot. This tailed beast. And its viscous song. What a miracle these spaces. Are what make us whole.
A detail of my liver embroidery tethered by fluid & ligaments (2023) with some of the strictures typical of PSC done as agate beads, with some liver abscesses on the top layer of organza. I have many more strictures now, and as of November 2025 I no longer have a gallbladder. More about this piece here.
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Workshop: Seeing Symptoms

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A few months ago Lorraine Boissoneault contacted me about teaching a workshop together. I was only a little familiar with her work but I had heard good things about her upcoming book, Body Weather: Notes on Chronic Illness—out now!—and was intrigued by what she had in mind. We connected over our invisible illnesses and how our creative work has helped us share what others can’t see.

Lorraine also wrote a very complimentary post about me here with more information on the workshop and statistics about invisible illness: Disabled Sci-Art

I hope you’ll join us for this short and hopefully helpful workshop next week.

Seeing Symptoms: An Art and Poetry Workshop

Join artist Lia Pas and writer Lorraine Boissoneault for an hourlong workshop exploring the ways we can use art to make invisible illnesses more visible. The session will be virtual and free. It will be held on Zoom on Thursday May 28 at 12pmPST/1pmMST/2pmCST/3pmEST. A backup date (in case of illness) will be Tuesday June 16.

Participants will need pen/pencils and paper, anatomical printouts (which can be found for free on Wikimedia by searching “Gray’s Anatomy”), and any other art materials they’d like to work with. Lia will demonstrate her symptomatology embroidery and then lead participants in a guided meditation and drawing technique to help visualize symptoms. Lorraine will share a poetry exercise for generating new ways of describing the experience of fatigue, pain, and other aspects of chronic illness. Participants will come away with new techniques for exploring their illnesses and ideas for how to translate them into descriptions to share with medical providers, as well as an increased sense of bodily autonomy.

This event will be hosted in partnership with Chicago-based queer and Covid cautious organization Parallel Play. We chose the month of May in recognition of ME Awareness month, but will be talking about other invisible illnesses as well. To register, please follow this link. You can find our access guide there.

SciArt September 2025

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A banner image promoting the month-long art challenge, SciArt September 2025. The banner features an bison illustration plus text describing a monthly theme, weekly themes, and daily prompt words. The month-long theme is conservation. In order, the weekly themes are: Week 1:Lands, species, water, people, and a shared future. Finally, the list of daily words is as follows. Week one: Islet, canopy, jewel, riverbank, corridor, prairie, boreal. Week 2: Niche, vanishing, tawny, venomous, wandering, bottleneck, mimic. Week 3: Spawning, rift, trawl, cenote, depths, glacial, reef. Week 4: Fellowship, scouting, numbered, tireless, forage, bounded, harvest. Week 5: Foresight, dream. The event is hosted by LizLagomorph and LucyGemArt.

I’ve participated in SciArt September for a few years and this is year five! Liz Butler and Lucy Gem came up with some excellent prompts. The main theme is Conservation with each week on a different theme: lands, species, water, people, and a shared future. Most of my artwork is anatomy-based so I’ll be playing with the themes, but I have a number of ecological-themed poems so there will be more poetry in what I share this year.

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Interview on Threadstack

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Late in 2024, Kathryn Vercillo of Threadstack and Create Me Free sent me some intriguing interview questions which I used as journaling prompts between liver infections. The interview is now online for all to read. In it I share the experience of changing mediums due to health, beginning to identify as having a disability, reading The Van Gogh Blues, and so much more.

Threadstack Interview with Lia Pas of The Slowest Thread

Opera Mariposa Benefit 2025

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I’ve been dealing with some recurrent liver issues the past few months so haven’t been able to write and post as much as I like, but ME Awareness Month is almost over so here is information for this year’s benefit!

I’m excited to announce that I’m once again a featured artist in Opera Mariposa’s 2024 Benefit + Awareness Month! 🦋 I’m honoured to share both art and music to support the ME | FM Society of BC and raise awareness for those affected by ME/CFS, Long Covid, and Fibromyalgia. Join me for this all-online charity extravaganza at Benefit.OperaMariposa.com from May 1 – June 1, 2025. There’s music, art, over $3,000 in prizes and more – and it’s all for a great cause!

A blue image of a woman looking over her shoulder with clouds and fields in her skin. The text reads: Opera Mariposa's Benefit & Awareness Month. With more text as mentioned in the paragraph above the image.
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When Illness Becomes the Way: Stoicism as a Way through Chronic Illness and Disability

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This essay was originally published by Classical Wisdom after winning their Stoic Essay Writing Contest in 2022. You can read the original post here.

What happens to each of us is ordered. It furthers our destiny.

Marcus Aurelius[1]

We never know when our lives might be changed suddenly and irrevocably. 2015 was one of the most successful years of my career as a multidisciplinary artist and vocal coach. I was teaching privately and at our local university and collaborating with several other performing artists. My largest project was writing and performing libretto and music for an upcoming dance opera. After a three week intensive with the dance opera company, my collaborator came down with a virus. I gently hugged her aching body and said goodbye. The next day I was sick. I still haven’t recovered.

Stoicism has been of great help in managing my mental and physical health while living with chronic illness. I also believe Stoicism has the potential to shift how society views those disabled by chronic illness—from burdens to human beings capable of flourishing—and to offer the support necessary to make that happen.

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Opulent Mobility: a group show in LA

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I’m very honoured to have two pieces included in this year’s Opulent Mobility show! Opulent Mobility is an international annual exhibit that asks artists to re-imagine disability as opulent and powerful. It imagines a world where disability is celebrated instead of denied, ignored, and feared. These exhibits are curated by founder A. Laura Brody and disability arts activist and photographer Anthony Tusler and include art and artworks from across the country and around the globe. 

On the top left, a profile of a pale skinned woman with a breathing tube and butterflies attached to her cheeks. Below is a red maple leaf with gold text reading Sacrifice the Weak. On the right a woman painted white with a white head bandage crouches at the bottom of a triangular ladder heading towards a tiny door. White text reads Opulent Mobility 2024 at the Los Angeles Maker, 260 S. Los Angeles St, LA, CA 90012, Celebrate disability in all its forms. Artworks: Breathe by Patricia Fortlage, Pandemic Eugenics by Megan Bent, and Barriers by Bronte Grimm.
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the wandering ghost

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I completed my largest embroidery to date—the wandering ghost—in June. The stitched area is 53 x 21 cm (21 x 8.5 inches).

An image of an old engraving of a vagus nerve is embroidered on green cotton. The gut is in a large bamboo embroidery hoop. The embroidery of the main nerve lines is done in blue chain stitch in perlé cotton. The brain and some of the face is stitched in the same thread in backstitch. Details in the face are stitched in single strand floss. A bright red anatomical heart is stitched in red whipped back stitch. Around it a bright golden yellow halo in a vesica piscis shape is stitched in single strand thread. Three sets of ribs have are stitched in bright green/yellow stem stitch. There are some tiny details in different colours along some of the nerves. Burgundy roiling with sparse tiny black French knots are stitched in the gut area. The nerve endings in the diaphragm area are lengthened with one and two strand whipped back stitch. Lia’s initials are stitched in green thread in the bottom right.

Clean up took a lot more time than usual because the chalk pencil I used was especially stubborn to wash out of the cotton and I wanted to wet block instead of iron it which took a bit of figuring out since that’s a new process for me. But it is done! Aside from cleanup I worked on it from June 14, 2023 to June 12, 2024. An entire year.

Read on for more about my process for this piece.

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