My work spans multiple disciplines, but every project shares a common goal: to explore language as a force that shapes experience, perception, and connection. Each initiative reflects a different route on this journey through technology, public engagement, research, or artistic practice.
An ongoing project creating spaces for shared expression, struggle, and belonging. Through writing workshops, interactive installations, and facilitated dialogues, The Iona Initiative focuses on language as a means of connection and healing. It is designed for individuals and communities seeking to engage with expression as a practice of resilience and meaning-making.
A digital tool designed to refine how people articulate complex emotions, Lingwell helps users find clarity in moments when language fails them. Whether navigating physical pain, emotional distress, uncertainty, or personal reflection, the platform offers structured guidance for making meaning through words.
A site-based public art project exploring presence, impermanence, and the language of loss. Stations takes shape as traditional exhibitions, participatory performance events, and interactive installations that invite people to engage with memory, place, and time. Whether in natural landscapes, galleries, or urban spaces, the project examines how words anchor us to what is passing.
The Center for Linguistic Health
A research and engagement initiative dedicated to understanding the relationship between language, trauma, and well-being. The Center for Linguistic Health develops research, public programming, and partnerships that explore how linguistic structures impact personal and collective healing. It serves as a foundation for inquiry and action, integrating scholarly work with direct engagement.
A foundational framework underlying all my work, The Grammar of Existence examines how language structures reality, perception, and identity. It explores how inherited linguistic patterns shape our understanding of the world and ourselves, offering a lens through which we might interrogate meaning, belonging, and transformation. This concept weaves through all my projects, from public art to expressive writing to research on linguistic health.
My academic and creative research focuses on the intersections of language, consciousness, trauma, and artistic expression. My work draws from philosophy, literature, cognitive science, and lived experience, shaping projects that engage deeply with how language affects personal and collective well-being. My research has informed collaborations with frontline workers, medical professionals, educators, and artists, exploring how linguistic structures influence perception, healing, and resilience.
As the Poet Laureate of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, I develop programs and initiatives that bring poetry into public life, using language as a means of connection, reflection, and cultural dialogue. This role allows me to create and curate events, workshops, and collaborations that center poetry as a living, participatory art form. My work in this capacity focuses on themes of identity, belonging, and the changing nature of language in contemporary life.
Each of these projects invites participation in different ways—whether through direct interaction, collaboration, or exploration. If something here speaks to you, I welcome the conversation.
Matthew Leavitt Brown
Poet | Artist | Educator | Advocate
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Matthew Leavitt Brown 