The Source, Book Club, Queer Poetics of Disability Workshop, and more

Invitations, celebrations, and things that moved me over the last month

I have a few different exciting things coming down the pipeline this season amidst the chaos and violence of our nation and around the globe. The dissonance is palpable, and I toggle between gratitude and guilt thousands of times a day. I am restraining the impulse to list the atrocities and enter into litany. Instead, I am choosing to highlight sources of joy, meditation, edification, and beauty that do not escape from these realities, but give us points of entry into them that expand our view and response beyond anxiety and terror. All that being said, because it must be said, free Palestine, Congo, Sudan, and the people of America who do not wish to be architects of death and destruction worldwide.

Pain Baby Podcast: I am proudly the new co-editor of Dead End Zine, and released my first ever scrappy little podcast episode for Pain Baby Podcast interviewing founder, editor, and press founder Hunter Hodkinson last week. you can listen to the the episode here.

Pain Baby Book Club: The first is an invitation to the second iteration of Pain Baby Book Club! Our first meeting on Hala Alyan’s The Moon That Turns You Back was a rich discussion that yielded emily brandt’s beautiful “tiny review” on her Substack, Open Language. Our next Pain Baby Book Club is scheduled for will focus on Zeina Hashem Beck’s O on May 21st. No one has to have read the book to attend. I will curate poems for discussion and share them with everyone at the beginning of session. We will read them together in real time. Sign up here to receive the Zoom link next week!

The Source Podcast: Divya Victor and I collaborated throughout 2023-4 on manifesting an idea we had: what if we created a podcast mini-series that invited poets to close-read and contextualize their work? What if we could find a way to demystify the process of how great poems come to be? We named it The Source to indicate our interest in the foundations of process from seed, to root, to bloom. Thanks to the Asian American Writers Workshop’s generous invitation to host our project, the first episode is live featuring Rajiv Mohabir! You can listen to the episode for free on Spotify, YouTube, and anywhere else you get your podcasts.

Other Announcements and Invitations:

• Invitations from No, Dear Magazine

  • RECORD RECORD chapbook series from No, Dear Magazine available now! We put a lot of love into these works, and they’re beautiful.

  • If you’ve missed previous opportunities to take a workshop with Karl Michael Iglesias, we are lucky to have him lead one for No, Dear on May 24! Details here.

• Invitations from Epiphany Magazine

  • Epiphany Magazine is now open for submissions of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction prose. I serve as poetry editor and can’t wait to see your submissions!

  • Join us for Epiphany Magazine’s Summer Fete: a Night of Live Music, Poetry, Raffle, Auction, and Unique Cocktails featuring Mahogany L. Browne and Emily Kirven as our honored Guests! Thursday, June 12 · 6:00pm - LATE, Urbane Arts Club, 1016 Beverley Road Brooklyn, NY 11218. Tickets.

Celebrating and Uplifting:

• My forever-work-wife, feminist literary theorist of all things bodily Liza Shapiro, has started a much anticipated newsletter, Soviet Passport to Queens, the first post in which takes its aim at the fundamental problem with TERF logic. Subscribe!

• The lovely Seth Leeper, one of my Randolph kin, has one of his signature Pantoublocks published in Adroit! Read “Pantoublock with Uber Ride and Traffic”

• More Randolph excellence: Mia S. Willis published an extraordinary poem in Split This Rock’s database, The Quarry! Read “For Imam Khaliifah Ibn Rayford Daniels”

• Actor, disability justice advocate, and activist Colin Buckingham served as a writer for PBS American Masters documentary “RENEGADES”, which won a Webby! This documentary series showcases the lives and cultural contributions of little-known historical figures with disabilities. Check it check it

• My disabled sister-poet’s book FREELAND is available for pre-order from Alice James Books! To experience her genius in poetry and disability and abolition advocacy, read this incisive essay for The Poetry Foundation, “Otherwise Hidden, or Self-Erasure as a Teleology”

Recommended:

• Omotara Jones on V.S. As if the combination of Ajanae Dawkins, Brittany Rogers, and Omotara Jones wasn’t enough, this is one of the best conversations I’ve heard in a while about a poet’s responsibility to themself, the speaker, and the reader.

• Gorgeous Interview with Rajiv Mohabir, also the first guest on The Source

• Interview with Sarah Aziza on her new memoir

• The Mango in Diasporic Literature

• Priyanaka is a Los Angeles-born DJ who blends her Sri Lankan Tamil heritage with rhythms from around the world. Some of the deepest Bollywood cuts I’ve heard in years. This set has given me life at my least energetic multiple times this week.

• — Until next time!