Issue 35: mekararuanan by Featured Writer Michellan Sarile-Alagao | clicking a last sacred letter of love by Featured Artist Shelby Silver
"My great-grandmother had been dead for years when my soul fled. I searched days for my soul, going back and forth between our old haunts, the places we hid in, cried at, crawled into...."
Welcome to KHÔRA, a dynamic online arts space produced in collaboration with Lidia Yuknavitch’s Corporeal Writing. Visit our Archive to read previous issues. Scroll down if you’d like your work to be considered for future issues.
mekararuanan by Featured Writer Michellan Sarile-Alagao | artwork by Joel Alagao
mekararuanan1
Hasta que el pueblo las canta, Sikaw kurug a maya
las coplas, coplas no son, kataw ta gabbayan na
y cuando las canta el pueblo, ariammu itun
ya nadie sabe el autor. a ammum tu aru y lalung.
“La Copla” An Ibanag proverb
Manual Machado
I. itte/uno
My great-grandmother had been dead for years when my soul fled. I searched days for my soul, going back and forth between our old haunts, the places we hid in, cried at, crawled into. When I finally found my soul I asked, can you return? Let us share a meal, walk in step, inhale the same breath and be the wholeness of sleep, of dream. She said she wanted to come back more than anything, that she, too, missed sleep and food and me. But she could not, not until we did the mangagaggako2 then she sadly slipped away.
Read mekararuanan.
Michellan Sarile-Alagao is an editor, educator, writer, wife, and mother. She was a poetry fellow at the 2023 international Roots. Wounds. Words Annual Writers’ Retreat for BIPOC writers, and in 2022 attended Corporeal Writing’s Geo Eros: Metaphorizing Place in Nonfiction and Memoir webinar. She was one of the Graphic Salute awardees at the 2024 Nick Joaquin Literary Awards in the Philippines. She has a BSc. in Criminology and Psychology from the London Metropolitan University and an MFA in Creative Writing from DLSU-Manila. Her poems have been published in various anthologies and magazines. She has written a poetry collection, After the Sunstone (2016); a poetry chapbook, Maps of Tenderness (2018); a verse-novella, Black (2020); a picture book in rhyming verse for children, The Sad Cat (2022); and a flash fiction chapbook, Elena and Other Stories (2023).
clicking a last sacred letter of love by Featured Artist Shelby Silver
I am an Ecological Artist, and Educator born in the Northwest near the Pacific Ocean. From an early age, I felt called to help safeguard our seas, and those who rely on them. As ecology focuses on the interconnected relationships between life forms and their surroundings, so too does my work.
My practice of utilizing salvaged plastic marine debris through artistic application explores the intimate interactions between humanity, the earth, and our oceans, and moreover how these relationships evolve over time and influence one another.
I am a working artist, and teach intergenerational creative conservation through art, a Gerontology Professional, Certified Professional Activity Director, Conscious Dying Coach and End of Life Doula. I believe in whole person care, compassion, creativity, community, and conservation.
When we support one another in kindness, the world becomes a happier and healthier place for us all…..
Read clicking a last sacred letter of love.
Shelby Silver is a multidisciplinary ecological artist, intergenerational educator, public speaker, and singer-songwriter.
Her work is focused on oceanic conservation through the collection of plastic marine debris from our seas and local beaches. Shelby was born in Grays Harbor Washington near the Pacific Ocean and grew up on a llama ranch, upon the traditional homelands of the Quinault Indian Nation, where her work as a young fiber artist served to influence and inform her current process. As a child, Shelby’s favorite natural outdoor space was the beach where she observed the ocean’s ability to heal, provide nourishment, and ultimately bring people together. As a result, her early childhood experiences nurtured her stewardship values, and along with them her passion to preserve and protect our oceans.
Today Shelby’s work explores the intertwining relationships between humankind and nature, and the overall role they play in service of one another. From her paintings, paper making, illustrations, reclaimed marine rope basket sculptures, tapestries, large scale installations, art classes, and more, Shelby demonstrates these connections by pulling salvaged plastic marine debris materials into her practice. Her most recent body of work includes paper that she has made with twenty years of personally collected ephemera including her own writing, and then pressing the plastic marine debris into the pulp. This collection titled Palpable Pulp & Lasting Impressions intimately examines impermanence and the starkly contrasted longevity of plastic marine debris across the life course perspective, and within the human condition during the Anthropocene.
Shelby now resides in rural Western Oregon on The Healing Land & Water Way Project founded by her partner and herself and upon the sacred indigenous territory of the Kalapuya people. This is where Shelby calls home. She lives in a small cottage with her partner and their cat, and it is there she works from her attached studio. Shelby still spins llama, alpaca, and sheep’s wool on the Ashford spinning wheel she’s had for twenty-seven years and weaves the yarn into her tapestries as a means of paying homage to her upbringing.
Shelby is a certified scuba diver, holds two degrees from Portland Community College, one in the Applied Science of Gerontology with specialized training and focus in whole person care, and another in General Studies with focus in psychology. She is a certified professional activity director, is currently pursuing a Bachelors of Science in social sciences at Portland State University, and has become a certified End of Life Doula through The Conscious Dying Institute in efforts of providing deeper support to our collective community. Shelby is inspired by the powerful, and transformative healing capacity of art and is working towards a Masters as a licensed Art Therapist. She has taught with and through the Bay Islands International School in Roatan Honduras, Cannon Beach Art Association, Unity Spiritual Center, Portland Community College, Northwind Art, Port Townsend Marine Science Center, her own business Salt of Earth & Sea Studio LLC., and in many more contexts.
Issue 35 Highlights
Issue 35 | Part 4: Your Angel, Nadine by Swati Sudarsan | photograph by Michel O’Hara
Artists and Writers
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With galactic gratitude,
Leigh Hopkins
and the Corporeal/KHÔRA squad