 Named “Best Poet in Arkansas,” Kai Coggin is the author PERISCOPE HEART, WINGSPAN, and INCANDESCENT. She is a QWOC who thinks Black Lives Matter, a poetry teaching artist with the Arkansas Arts Council, and host Wednesday Night Poetry. She lives with her wife in Hot Springs National Park.
Artist Statement My poetry is fiery and intuitional, struck by wonder, and driven by searching out light in the chaos. My work for the last 15 years has been about facilitating empathy, bridging language to heart, finding a way to effectively communicate feelings and experiences into tangible moments of poetry or learning— and sometimes if I am lucky, both. I have been a poet all of my life, even before I knew that how I was navigating the world had a name, had a particular magnifying lens that looked at everything a little closer, a little deeper, searching for meaning in the mundane. After a series of adolescent traumas shaped my small shoulders into weighted-down worlds, it was poetry that saved my life, literally and figuratively.  Arisa White is an assistant professor of creative writing at Colby College and a Cave Canem fellow. She is the author of Who’s Your Daddy (Augury Books 2021), co-editor of Home Is Where You Queer Your Heart (Foglifter Press 2021), and co-author of Biddy Mason Speaks Up (Heyday Books 2019), winner of the 2020 Maine Literary Award for Young People’s Literature. She serves on the board of directors for Foglifter and Nomadic Press. arisawhite.com
Artist Statement I’m writing with the future at my back, and beauty is a scar on my poems. Each poem is an unlearning and learning again, the symmetry and asymmetry of things collaging their experiences, shapes, and forms to create a moment of pause—a stillness that allows us to account more deeply for our existence. With poetry, I create those moments of afterlife, of attentiveness, of provocation where people are reawakened to their senses. Where they embody the power of language—to truth and tell, to bridge and voice, to agitate what makes us numb and separated, to reclaim our belonging. In my teaching, I call on this wild-water beauty to facilitate the flow of creativity already present in us all, so we remember and practice being a force that contributes to the making of our world. So we embrace our abilities to be resourceful and generative, communal and a single drop. I’m doing this for the record, living the poetry of my life.  Poet E Spoken is an explosive freestyle artist, History Teacher, Co-host of VENT an online literary Empathy Circle, and My Word Open Mic. She released her 1st CD entitled “Every Knee” in 2019. Her book Cried Out Laughing is due out later this year.
Artist Statement Who is Poet E. Spoken (Elaine C. Brown)? She's a writer, a mother, an activist, and teacher. She grew up in Brooklyn New York on the sounds, history, and the teachings of her family especially from her mother Joan Starks (Vintage). She exposed her to the arts, True History, and taught her how to cultivate her voice through writing and protests starting at the age of 3. Poet E. Spoken has a B.S in History and Secondary Education. She combines Freestyle Poetry with History to get people, especially the youth, to understand what's going on in this world today in order to change their mindsets. Her voice and words flow like water on topics of sexual abuse, violence, racism, or anykind of ism in order to heal....  Maxine David has performed slam poetry in Portland, Eugene, and Berkeley and writes both prose and poetry. Maxine is currently based in Berkeley, CA.
Why do you write? What compels you to write? You have to find ways to work through questions in your life (what does it mean to love certain people; what does harm leave in its aftermath; why am I like this, etc.), and writing ended up being something that allowed me to do that work. Language is navigation, and I feel perpetually lost. Both literally and emotionally. What are some of your artistic influences/inspirations? Mitski, one of my favorite musicians, can convey so much emotion and story with a few words in her songwriting. For poetry, Safia Elhillo writes stunning work, but specifically her imagery and syntax inspire me. As for prose, Zadie Smith’s novels showcase incredible, thought-out character studies. I could go on listing inspirational work forever. Describe your work in five words. Sad, languorous gay yearning  Shelley Wong is the author of As She Appears (YesYes Books, 2022), winner of the 2019 Pamet River Prize, and the chapbook RARE BIRDS (Diode Editions). She is an affiliate artist at Headlands Center for the Arts and has received fellowships from MacDowell, Kundiman, and Vermont Studio Center.
Why do you write? What compels you to write? I write to learn what I know and rethink, going further and taking off. Stanza is Italian for room, so poems have doors, entrances and exits, and can be houses to build, dwell in, or move on from. As a young person, I felt lonely searching for poets and poems with the power to affirm who I was and wanted to become. Now, it is a joy to be part of a beautiful queer POC community of poets and discover our lineage. I write to recognize myself in my speakers and center queer women on their own terms, being of and not merely against. What upcoming writing projects are you working on? Due to the pandemic and its related stressors, my press is pushing my book publication to 2022, which gives me some time to breathe and self-care before going through the editorial process next year. For the remainder of 2020, I am focusing on a family history project in relation to the Bay Area, including site-specific meditations and explorations in the Headlands, where I have a precious writing studio at Headlands Center of the Arts. Describe your work in five words Gathering, leaping, breaking the silence.  My name’s Javier Kennedy Gutierrez and I’m a trans Chicanx man. Born and raised in California, I moved to the east coast at 18 and started my life as a serious artist. I’ve been living in San Francisco for 13 years now, continuing my passion to grow as a writer.
Why do you write? What compels you to write? I want to be heard. I think growing up in the Central Valley of California gives you this type of underdog attitude. So much is misunderstood about that part of the state and I really believe that translates into the people. That on top of being trans and queer has really driven me to be louder about my experiences. Writing helps me feel seen as a complex being even if the subject matter isn’t explicitly about myself. What are some of your artistic influences/inspirations? Music and colors are my biggest influences. I’ll hear a song and a specific color palette will come to mind that invokes a feeling and I’ll just go from there. That’s how my fiction work comes to be. As for my poetry, Anne Sexton is by far my biggest influence. I discovered her in high school and instantly connected to her style. What upcoming writing projects are you working on? I’m currently working on a noir fiction piece that I’m really excited about! It’s set in San Francisco’s Chinatown during WW2 and is centered around a gay interracial love affair between a white homocide detective and a Chinese bartender. This project has been really satisfying for me not just in a creative way, but I’m also a huge history lover, so doing the research around queer Chinatown has been a lot of fun.  Lia Dun is a nonbinary chinese american writer living in San Francisco. Their writing explores the intersections of asian american and queer identities. Lia's work has appeared in The Rumpus, Catapult, Exposition Review, and Autostraddle.
Why do you write? What compels you to write? I usually give a smartass response to this, like "I write because I don't know how to have a real career" or "I enjoy being useless to humanity." It feels embarrassing to take myself seriously, but I'm trying harder now. These days, it's become even more obvious how art keeps us connected and helps us imagine new possibilities. Also, it makes me happy, another thing I'm making an effort to believe is important. What upcoming writing projects are you working on? I'm working on a few essays. About a year ago, I switched from writing mainly fiction to personal essays, and I'm still getting used to putting all these cringey things about myself on the page. What are some of your artistic influences/inspirations? I'm so bad at picking people! I'm obsessed with Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha's writing. I hadn't heard of disability justice before I read her work, and it changed the way I think about basically everything. Also, her work is just so direct, angry, full of joy, and funny at the same time. Another writer whose work I really love is Kai Cheng Thom, especially her poem "trauma is not sacred." A few months ago, I read We Are Never Meeting in Real Life by Samantha Irby, and I want to be hilarious while writing about deep shit like that. In middle school, I liked to read and write fanfiction, mostly for the anime Yu Yu Hakusho, which is about a teenage boy who saves the world from demons. Most of it was pretty awful, but it was also so gay and overflowing with feelings in a way that wasn't self-conscious at all. I think a lot of my writing practice as an adult has been trying to recapture that experience of writing because I wanted to and not knowing or caring if it was good or bad.  Headshot by Laila Bahman Celeste Chan is a writer and filmmaker schooled by Do-It-Yourself Culture and immigrant parents from Malaysia and the Bronx, NY. She co-directed Queer Rebels, created experimental film programs for OUTsider and MIX NYC, ran Writing Rainbow, and toured with Sister Spit. She serves as a board member for Foglifter Journal.
from the artist Why do you write? What compels you to write? So many reasons! I often feel I am trying to go back in time to excavate and heal my family’s history. I am trying to leave traces for others, to process what I could not otherwise process, to scare myself, to make an offering, to connect and be part of a greater conversation. What upcoming writing projects are you working on? I’m working on a memoir and a novel. That feels scary to say, so now I must do it. Make it real. Accountability! Describe your work in five words: Earnest, experimental, imagistic, QUEER, hybrid, and often documentary. What are some of your artistic influences/inspirations? I will say that I love Moonlight (directed by Barry Jenkins and adapted from Tarell Alvin McCraney's semi-autobiographical play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue). I love Lynda Barry, always. I need to imprint that comic in my mind - art is “not something that you are good or bad at, it is just something that you do.” The first queer book I ever read was Randal Kenan’s A Visitation of Spirits. It is a gorgeously crafted novel. As a young queer, I latched onto the story of a closeted young Black man who comes to understand himself through Einstein’s theory of relativity. I return to The Gangster We Are All Looking For for its form—fragmentary, impressionistic, nonlinear —and content: the melancholy of migration, filial love, how war embeds itself within a family, bodies of water, and the shape of loss. Seventeen years after that first encounter, lê thị diễm thúy’s words continue to haunt me.  antmen pimentel mendoza (he + she) is a writer based in Ohlone Land (the East San Francisco Bay Area) where he works and dreams alongside students at a university cultural center. Her poetry is published or forthcoming in Cosmonauts Avenue, Underblong, and Lantern Review. antmen is online as @antmenismagic.
Why do you write? What compels you to write? I'm compelled to write for a few reasons, I think. I write for fun, as play, for pleasure. I write to connect, to be in community. I write to process, to document, towards healing (I hope). Also, my tatay's favorite activity is kwentuhan and my nanay was a great storyteller, too. I think they definitely influence my writing. Describe your work in five words I watched too much VH1. What are some of your artistic influences/inspirations? My families, reality television, Franny Choi's Soft Science, Robyn's music video for "Ever Again," Michael DeForge's Big Kids, Beyoncé's Super Bowl half time show and Lemonade, Alexander Chee's Edinburgh, Kate Bush's album Hounds of Love, Chen Chen's When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities, playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild on my Switch.  Photo Credit: Michelle Kilfeather Yeva Johnson, a poet whose work appears or is forthcoming in the Bellingham Review and Sinister Wisdom, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. A past Artist-in-Residence for Show Us Your Spines, part of the Marin Poetry Center and QTPOC4SHO, an artists’ collective, Yeva explores interlocking caste systems and human connections. Artist Statement Yeva Johnson, a Black American Jewish queer Lesbian feminist pacifist Unitarian Universalist mother and musician, is an emerging poet who works as a family physician by day. Yeva’s poems are lyrical explorations of social hierarchies and interlocking caste-systems, the life cycle, nature and possibilities for interconnection. In a process she calls meta-ekphrastic, Yeva blends art, music, literature and other experiences to cross boundaries. Her poems engage the reader/listener on multiple levels and touch people at their soft centers either through the written page or in performance. Yeva believes that art can connect us to the present, past, and future. Some of Yeva’s favorite poets include Arisa White, Dawn McGuire, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Eve L. Ewing, Lucille Clifton, Lynn Emanuel, Pat Parker, Patricia Smith, and Sappho. Yeva has been invited to be a reader at the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco in August and September of 2020 (www.MOADsf.org). |
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