Writing and drawing are identical gestures made with the hand.
Poet and author Renee Gladman begins her collection of poems, Calamities, by making this statement, and throughout her literary career, Gladman has shown that she likes to fuse together lots of different things, to create something new and different and ultimately undefinable. This collection, for example, comprises essays that could also be considered to be prose poems. Some critics have called them short stories; Gladman suggests they might be verbal sketches. Gladman is fascinated by assuming the role of both writer and reader in Calamities, which is why most of the anthology is a sort of no-man's land between the two.
The essays contained in the book are all linked, and are concerned with the life, mind and emotions of the author. Each essay focuses on one particular day, and comments upon the shifting consciousness of the writer according to what she happens to encounter during that time. Like most of her work, the essays are philosophicla in nature, which is probably due to the fact that Gladman studied Philosophy at Vassar College before going on to study Poetics at New College of California. Her goal in writing has always been to defy genres and to break down the barriers between fiction and prose.
Gladman is the recipient of a number of literary honors, including a 2016 Foundation for Contemporary Arts grant and a Lannar Foundation Writing Residency in 2017.
