Tracy Dimond

About the Artist

Tracy Dimond co-curates Ink Press Productions. A 2016 Baker Artist Award finalist, she is the author of four chapbooks: TO TRACY LIKE / TO LIKE / LIKE (akinoga press 2018). I WANT YOUR TAN (Ink Press 2015), Grind My Bones Into Glitter, Then Swim Through The Shimmer (NAP 2014), and Sorry I Wrote So Many Sad Poems Today (Ink Press 2013) - winner of Baltimore City Paper's BEST CHAPBOOK. She collaborated with Amanda McCormick on the performance, DID YOU COVER UP? a blend of I WANT YOUR TAN and Amanda McCormick’s & THE GREEN. She is a 2016 Baker Artist Award finalist. She holds her MFA in Creative Writing & Publishing Arts from the University of Baltimore. 

Artist's Statement

I interrogate the role of the female body and what it means to have chronic pain in my poetry. My critique is informed by theory, performance, and personal experience. Women are under contradictory pressures – to be fuckable but to be demur, to be successful but to serve everyone around them, to be beautiful but – these requirements are impossible. When you add internal pain to that, existence feels like madness. Because of this, I use a flat, direct tone that becomes almost monstrous in my current writing. I through observation and experience, I explore how women cope with multiple expectations. I come from college athletic background. Specifically, I was a swimmer, which requires grace and strength. Although I don’t write about my swimming experience specifically, it informs my perspectives on trying to altering a body for functionality and survival in a hostile environment that is created by exterior or interior pressure.