Bhanu Kapil is the author of The Vertical Interrogation
of Strangers from Kelsey Street Press,
and Incubation: A Space for Monsters from Leon Works.
A forthcoming collection entitled Humanimal:
A Project for Future Children, will be published this fall,
also by Kelsey Street Press.
Her work has appeared in numerous journals,
including Chain, Conjunctions , Denver Quarterly and Salt Hill.
She currently teaches at Naropa University,
and in the low-residency MFA in Writing at Goddard College.
Bhanu's work has been described by critics
as stunning, physically and linguistically brave,
and continuously shifting.
She states, "I've been thinking of books
as membranes for the beings or figures that inhabit them."
Bear with me as I make an analogy.
Calling back our high school science education,
we hopefully remember that membranes witness continuous
shifting via the process of osmosis,
where solvents pass in and out, creating
energy and equilibrium.
Osmotic pressure is the pressure required
to maintain this equilibrium.
What catches me most about Kapil's collection, Incubation,
is the way in which identity becomes
likened to this pressure.
The force that is suspended and dependent on the concentration
of language which enters the speaker's
metaphorical membranes, and the lack of words
to describe the feat Bhanu has performed,
which is why I am resorting to science.
I think Bhanu says it best in Notes Against a Cyborg preface.
I heard these words inside my own body.
Please join me in welcoming Bhanu Kapil.
[APPLAUSE]