LuLu Johnson earned a degree in Art History from Southern Methodist University, and an MFA in Poetry from Georgia State University. In Atlanta, LuLu began modeling for artists in graduate school, and she now resides in Appalachia where she hikes and writes her novels and poems.
PRAISE:
LuLu Johnson’s bold collection The Higher Call offers an intimate glimpse behind the curtain of artists and life models. Echoing John Berger’s insight that “to be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognized for oneself,” Johnson deftly alternates between poems that give voice to Picasso’s muses and those that speak to her own experiences as a model. With evocative, unflinching language that is at times funny and fearless, Johnson humanizes the model and transforms how we see both art and ourselves as viewers.
–Andrea Jurjević – author of In Another Country
The Higher Call pulls you onto the model’s stand, where bodies ache, gazes consume, and immortality comes at a cost. These fifteen interwoven poems let Picasso’s muses—Marie-Thérèse Walter and Olga Khokhlova—step out of the frame to speak, while the poet’s own experiences as a figure model mirror their longing, betrayal, and desire to be seen. Under blue spotlights and the scrape of Conté crayons, the collection explores what it means to give yourself over to art: to be transformed, possessed, adored, and ultimately forgotten. Lyrical and unflinching, The Higher Call asks—what price do we pay to become immortal?
–Phillip Shabazz — author of Moonflower
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