Poet | Essayist | Advocate

I’m a poet, weaver, and musician who advocates for humane, holistic health- and mental-health care and LGBTQIA+ rights. I believe the arts and poetry in particular can heal trauma at the individual and collective levels. I live in Toquerville, Utah, near Southern Utah’s wildlands outside Zion National Park.

My poetry has appeared in The Adroit Journal, Barrow Street, Chiron Review, Cider Press Review, Failbetter, Fence, FRiGG, Laurel Review, Mad in America, Meat for Tea, Muzzle, New Letters, Stirring, Willow Springs, and other journals under the names Dana Henry Martin, Dana Guthrie Martin, and M Ross Henry.

My chapbooks include Love and Cruelty (Meat for Tea, forthcoming), No Sea Here (Moon in the Rye Press, forthcoming), Toward What Is Awful (YesYes Books), In the Space Where I Was (Hyacinth Girl Press), and The Spare Room (Blood Pudding Press).

I’ve worked as a medical writer and patient advocate and have published that work under the names Dana Henry and Dana Martin. This fall, I’m starting a peer-led support group in Greater Zion through the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance (DBSA).

My teaching experience includes serving in Literacy AmeriCorps; serving as a writing and literacy volunteer in Washington State’s Children’s Home Society; teaching poetry in an academic after-school program in the Walla Walla, Washington, school district; and teaching poetry to seniors at Walla Walla Community College through its community education program.

I’m a relatively new weaver. Before the pandemic, I took a basic weaving class in Salt Lake City with Deanna Baugh and will someday complete the comprehensive tapestry weaving class I started that’s taught by Rebecca Mezoff. I’ve had work at Gallery 873 in Ivins, Utah, and Lundeen Inn of the Arts in Las Cruces, New Mexico. I focus on tapestry weaving, Saori weaving, and a combination of the two. Saori is a Japanese approach to weaving that’s inclusive and affirming. It focuses on the act of weaving as the process of knowing and expressing one’s self both in and through the cloth. I see endless possibilities for weaving as both a form of expression and a means for healing.

Also in this section: Poetry Collections, Published Work, and Reviews of My Work. Or browse my Selected Poems, Writing, and Visual content.