BIO

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Born. We grope our way into the world, we fall through halls of mirrors. Barely forth from the nest and already time is running out. The writer draws a few vials and hastily scrawls in blood some insignia onto the mirrors; rain runs it down. Through swamps of dim light he sloshes, then out into the wastes. Perhaps he manages to sink a few leaden steps into the dunes, encased on all sides by the housing of the hourglass. The famished seeker reaches for a pen; break the bread, it falls open with worms. Harrowed, the writer writes for his life. Smaller and smaller he becomes, stretched, as on the rim of a black hole. This writer no less than the rest.

Ocean is a disabled poet and novelist. He writes winding hypnogogic chronicles, ordeal fairy tales, pararealist poetry, ballads, gratuitous sci-fi, resuscitatory animist myth, postcards to no one, erasure incantations, and abstract erotic literature. The poet must drown in ink, an anthracite baptism, to make himself reborn—or he is lost.  

CV

Education

2022 MFA Creative Writing, Pacific Northwest College of Art

2003 Bachelor of the Liberal Arts, The Evergreen State College


2025 PLAYA, Summer Lake, Oregon (forthcoming)

2024    Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Annaghmakerrig, Ireland (forthcoming)

2023 Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, New York

2022 Santa Fe Art Institute, Santa Fe, New Mexico 

2022 Ragdale, Lake Forest, Illinois

2018 Headlands Center for the Arts, San Francisco, California

2018 Ragdale, Lake Forest, Illinois

2017 PLAYA, Summer Lake, Oregon

2015 Santa Fe Art Institute, Santa Fe, New Mexico

residencies


2022 Guest lecture, Dreamblur, Pacific Northwest College of Art

2022 Private fiction tutelage

2021 Guest writer, undergraduate creative writing, Portland State University

2018-19 Guest writer, undergraduate consciousness studies, The Evergreen State College (novel Helios on the syllabus)

lectures


awards

2023 John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Sponsored Residency, Yaddo 

2023 Whiting Foundation Grant

2023   PARC Foundation Arts Intervention Grant

2022 Prairie Fellowship

2018 Creative Access Fellowship

2017 Craig H. Neilson Foundation Fellowship

2017 Longlisted, Omnidawn Fabulist Fiction Chapbook Contest

2015 Creative Access Fellowship

2005 Jeanne Lohmann Poetry Award


publications:

books

2019 The Dream Jar, children’s stories (audiobook 2021)

2015 Helios, novel

2006 Black Hills Cabal, poetry collection

2003 Jupiter’s Sorrows, chapbook

short story

2024 “Pup” LoveAboards (Forthcoming)

2020 “Zeroeth World” (put to film with Chelsea Friedman)

2019 “Kryptonite” Breath and Shadow

poems

2023 “Asterion Deliriant” (reprint) Process & Place: Headlands at 40 

2023 “1894” Medicine for a Nightmare 

2021 “Asterion Deliriant” Samaritan Press 

2021 “Ceremony of the Slain Bear” Samaritan Press 

2021 “I Was Happy the Animals Came Back” Sheltered in Place 

2021 “Ship of Ghosts” Memorie 

2021 “Born” The Wilderness III 

2020 “Ghosts of Stone” The Wilderness II

2019 “Animal” Free State Review

2019 “Transformations III” Duende

2019 “Wheelchair” Monstering

2018 “Push” Intima

2018 “Coral” poem put to film, with Paul Sutfin

2017 “Northern Flicker” On the Edge

2014 “Dreamlife of the Styx” Cascadian Yule

2012 “Androgyne Primordial” Hex Magazine

2010 “Wheeling” Beyond Inclusion, Beyond Empowerment

2008 “Hollow Tree” Hex Magazine

2006 “Port of the Sun” Cascadian Yule

2005 “Rain” Fauna

2004 (Untitled) Mad Hatter’s Mercury

essay

2023   “Against Relevance” Oak Journal (forthcoming)

2021 “Hybrids” NoMaterialism

2020 “Ghosts of Stone” The Wilderness II

2019 “Echoes” The Wilderness I

2012-14  Music reviews: Vita Ignes Corpus Lignum 

2010 “Rain” Hideous Gnosis


readings

2023 Flow: Art and Ecology Symposium, Kitteredge Gallery, Tacoma 

2022 Hekate’s Crossing, Azoth, Portland

2022 Pallas Gallery, San Francisco

2022 Ragdale Dance Studio, Chicago

2021 Iran-America Artist Exchange, Along These Lines, Alberta Abbey Gallery, Portland 

2021 Ceremony of the Slain Bear, An Evening in the Garden, The Lab, Olympia

2018 Open House Readings, Headlands Center for the Arts, San Francisco

2017 Push, Bowery Poetry Club, New York

2015 SFAI 140, Santa Fe Art Institute, Santa Fe

2012 Asterion Deliriant, Cryptatropa, Olympia

2011 Port of the Sun, The Midnight Sun, Olympia

2010 Persophone Partaketh the Shade-Fruit, Hall of the Woods, Olympia

2009 As Heterocera Unto Sankta Lucia, Hall of the Woods, Olympia

2009 That the Sunlight May Penetrate Our Bones, Sizizis, Olympia

2007 Honey from the Dead King, Hall of the Woods, Olympia

2007 Dream Theater, Hall of the Woods, Olympia

2006 Earth is the River of Heaven, Manium, Olympia

2006 Unfolded Bird, Last Word Books, Olympia

2006 In the Beginningless Beginning, Last Word Books, Olympia

2005 Jupiter’s Sorrows and New Works, Orca Books, Olympia

2005 Mandorla, private showing, Olympia


Select exhibitions & performance

2023 The Village Scroll, Olympia Armory

2023 Palimpsest Journal, Thurston County Museum of Fine Art, Olympia

2021 Dear Koi, Lan Su Chinese Garden, Portland

2021 Speculative Futures: Art, AI and Digital Worldmaking, The Holt Gallery, Portland  

2021 Ekphrasis and Other Collaborations, Bar Francis, Olympia

2018 A Choir of Ghosts Refleshed, Circadia, Portland

2017 Psychopomp, Circadia, Portland

2012 Occultural Musick Festival, Seattle

2009 Oral Section, Sizizis, Olympia

2006 Salt, Parts Olympic, Cascadia

2003 Mixed Works, CARA Gallery, Seattle


Port of the Sun

Sirenum Scopuli

Rain

Halcyon

Divinorum

Food

bands


recordings

Reality Displacement Device

Four Rivers

Sungazers

Cynocephali

Fearthainne

Vita Ignes Corpus Lignum compilations

Cascadian Yule Compilations


resident soundscape artist

Ultraviolet

Cryptatropa

Obsidian

Sizizis

Olympia Grand Ballroom

Cascadian Yule


The Dream Cave

radio


film

Coral

Zeroeth World

Labyrinth Without Walls