Visions of Divine's Love

Forthcoming

“Visions of Divine Love” began with a joke as well as a question: what if medieval mystic, Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love was really about Divine the drag queen?
Corresponding loosely to Julian’s sixteen she wings, “Visions of Divine Love” comprises sixteen ekphrastic poems and images in response to John Waters’ film Pink Flamingos (1972) and its star, Divine. Written word “visions” are paired with “visualizations”, mixed media icons that blur the medieval and (post)modern, fomenting the whole book into a pseudo experience between text, image, and the movement between them in the reader’s imagination. The poems meanwhile are written from the perspective of cloistered academic and film buff Dr. Julia Johnson–a reimagined Julian–and her nameless teaching assistant and novice nun. As a queer woman in a conflated 14th and 21st century, Johnson’s vision is television, her Christs are Dreamlanders, and her revelations are sparked by the spectacular rites of the cult movie. Through the theoria of cinematic engagement, Johnson uncovers secrets about herself, the world, what it means to see God, and, indeed, what is divine love.