Sina Evans

About Me

In the last several years, I've come to describe myself as "artist" and "poet" as much as "teacher" or "daughter." As a schoolgirl, I was always polite to teachers and students but largely non-participatory, preferring to sit at the back of the room and watch everything. That early experience with observation became habit and I have lost hours, entire days even watching: lightning, mountains, ice melting, skies & shadows, crowds. I'm fascinated with light and shadow, and too with colors, shifts in energy and perception and opinion, words.

I write. Poetry, mostly, but sometimes a short story will leak out of my pen. I also paint with some in/frequency. I'm a photographer as well, and I often blend two or more of these Ps to create new or borrowed narratives. Most recently, I've been playing with tearing books apart to piece together new books from book pages, art, window screen, magazine pages, album covers and other flat media into something like a book collage.

My work has appeared online at Zingology, Spiral Orb, Corium Magazine, Unshod Quills and Blueprint Review. Additionally, I am the author of two, unique art books: Stella (single edition) and PINK (edition of 10), both of which were purchased by the University of Arizona's Poetry Center and housed in its Rare Book Room.

Why do you write?

I'm inspired by: paint chips, jellyfish, every color imaginable but especially (these days) lemon yellow, magenta, and blue-purple, conversations with friends, vintage pyrex, the mid-century aesthetic, words as art, the smell of rain in the desert, maps and ...

I used to trot out this quote by Jonathon Lethem about why he writes and still sometimes I think of it as my own reason. It's a little crass for polite audiences, and so I'll say this instead: I write because I don't know how not to write.

Any favorite authors? Books?

Favorite poems I've read:
Night in Blue (Brian Turner)
Pinacate Beetle by Erin Wilcox
footnotes to a history of desire by Kristy Bowen

Favorite books I've read:
Here, Bullet by Brian Turner
The Night Circus by Erin Morganstern
The Map as Art and You Are Here by Katharine Harmon
Sap Rising by Christine Lincoln
100 Days of Monsters by Stefan Boucher
the fever almanac by Kristy Bowen
In the Cut by Suzanne Moore
The Pleasure of My Company by Steve Martin

Favorite books I haven't yet read:
The Anthropology of Turquoise by Ellen Meloy
House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski
The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
The Architecture of Happiness by Alain de Botton
The Facts of Winter by Paul Poissel
tinder//heart (chapbook) by Lisa Cole
Aaron's book, Neha's Book