Poetry must come from somewhere that is more than the sum of family, race, education, history, culture, gender, pain, and passion. Every poet, of course, draws on as much, but why is it that so many Black women poets’ where-from place... Read More

No American education should be considered complete without a visceral understanding of plantation life for teenage Black girls in the slavery centuries before the Civil War, when molestation and sexual trauma were so routine that... Read More

It’s not easy being Keetje—so truthstakingly, heartgapingly, cliffedgingly vulnerable and live. The experience of her poetry feels dangerous, capable of triggering changes both lasting and longed for. That she recognizes love as... Read More

Michigan’s Upper Peninsula is the least-populated region in the lower 48. Walking a riverbank, you are more likely to meet a black bear, wolf, bobcat, or whitetail deer than you are a human—which is why M. Bartley Seigel calls the UP... Read More

If you walk long enough to see your hair turn gray, fending brush from your face through starless nights, note taking to the cadence of seasons, your poetry will reach great heights—that is, if Kelly Shepherd’s modus operandi holds... Read More

Trifle, in poet speak, refers to what doesn’t make the cut, to all of the musings and ideas that are deemed unworthy—why bother? Trifle, in other words, offers a wonderful window into a poets head and what they care to keep top of... Read More

Neuroscientists speculate that humans might have thirty or more senses, and we speculate that Patrycja Humienik’s acute sense of longing for a place that no longer exists on a map affects the way she perceives all the others. She is an... Read More

For queer Latinx Eduardo Martínez-Leyva, raised in El Paso by Mexican immigrants, piecing together a suitable cloak of masculinity is as much about survival as it is identity. His brother’s detainment and deportation serves as a... Read More