Six years ago Seattle poet Tara Hardy was blindsided by a mysterious chronic illness. It nearly killed her. She talks with KUOW's Elizabeth Austen about what it was like to live with that mystery, what changed once the disease had a name, and why she believes we're all living with a diagnosis of "human frailty."
The conversation begins with Hardy reading "Diagnosis," from her 2016 collection "My, My, My, My, My" from Write Bloody Press.
Hardy has described herself as "the working class, Queer, Femme, chronically ill, founder of Bent, a writing institute for LGBTQ writers in Seattle."
She teaches at Seattle Central College, Hugo House and Path With Art, and is a former Seattle Poet Populist and Writer in Residence at Hugo House. Her first collection of poetry was "Bring Down the Chandeliers."
Web extra: Tara Hardy tells how a quote from the Sufi poet Rumi helped her face her own mortality.
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