Ritual & Ruin: An Ode to My Inner Child

Ritual and Ruin took me 10 years to write and 4 years to get right. There are poems in here that I first wrote when I was 16. This book is basically what survived after a few dormant poetry blogs and a few more failed attempts at crafting a book. It took a while, but eventually I realized the process was the story.

The Ritual: An Archive of Devotion

Ritual and Ruin is a curated study in migrant melancholy. It's my archived ode to my inner child’s survival found through the Ritual of Observation. By transforming a lifetime of hoarded devotions—from teenage PalmPilot letters to university-budget artifacts—into a tactile artifact, this collection serves as a visual anchor and a future heirloom of my history. 

"the Ritual always remains the same:

Stop and look, stop and listen, stop and feel, then make something out of it."

The Ruin: Exploring the Alchemy of Memory​

This retrospective archive represents an intentional "ruining" of origins, where poems and images are re-imagined to prioritize the emotional weight of memory over simple biography. By infusing each piece with Jamaican flair and visual irreverence, I have created a de-commodified artifact that documents the alchemical process of art altering a life’s path.

"then the art comes for the Ruin"

Visual Poetry

Ritual and Ruin awoke a real desire in me to explore visual poetry. After playing with the combination of my poems and photos, I started to crave finding new ways of showing what goes through my mind as I read my work. 

In short, this book is what my obsession looks like.