Reverberations: On Memory & Being

A book of poems and place-based illustrations created by Melody Joy Overstreet during an Artist in Residence with the On Being Project.

Artist Reflection:

Throughout this residency, I have had moments of stillness that feel akin to a river that runs clear. Moments to listen and dwell in intimate presence with the kindred world. From these moments of clarity, words and stories emerged. I felt moved to create a book of poems and illustrations titled, Reverberations. This body of work explores themes of memory, being, reciprocity, and place. 

I am presently based in traditional unceded Awaswas territory along the coast of California, in a region presently tended by the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band. For me, being in conversation with place includes context for the long-arc story of the ecology, including all the people who have touched, tended, lived, and still coexist alongside this land, both in body and in spirit. As a person of Jewish, Persian, Iranian, and European lineages, born within the supposed U.S., a relationship to place, for me, is one centered in shifting contexts, story, logning, and change.

In being with place, I wondered how I could honor the people and elements where I live, and if the particular colors, textures, and sensations of where I am situated could speak through this work. I gently observed what was seasonally present (so much!). I was drawn to the trees, sat alongside the river, and took time to be in conversation with the plants. I noticed fallen redwood cones scattered across the forest floor, half buried in fallen leaves. I knelt to the ground and gently gathered a bundle with care. When I returned home, I infused them in water, gently simmered them on my old stove, and with time, create a lush, handmade ink. This living ink is at play in the gestural illustrations featured throughout this book.

More than anything, this work was and is guided by the questions, “What does it mean to be human?” and “What does it mean to live well in a place, together?” 

When I think about Reverberations, I think about the potency of words and their ripples. I wonder about the internal impulse to play a particular song again and again for the way that it touches us in a universal and soulful way. I think about the echo that remains even after the origin of a sound has paused.

I am blessed to have many teachers to thank for holding space for my growth and continued inspiration. All of them, seen and unseen, coalesce as a living part of this collection. 

I live within a floodplain, and like the changing river, words sometimes rush, full and intensely, and sometimes so quietly they are almost imperceptible. The words that compose these poems arose while in reflection — both within the house of my own body and within the larger web of life — from still time in my home garden, the garden where I teach, and the river that runs parallel to my humble home.

From the garden, the kitchen, from the river to the loom, I weave these words together as an offering of love and praise to this holy, tender world — to you. 

I wonder, are there words that can feel like they are making eye contact with the reader — so that wherever you are, however lonely, you somehow feel seen for the magical being that you are, for the troubled yet beautiful world you are a part of?

A printed copy of this full-length book of poems can be found here.