T202.
Do I Contain Multitudes? Who's Asking?
Thursday, March 9, 2023
1:45 pm to 3:00 pm
"Identity tends to be used as a thing to pin us down ... but I am imagining ways to become unpinnable," Natalie Diaz once said. In this panel, five poets will discuss writing queer identity under the cis-hetero-patriarchal gaze—how they use direct address, performance, epistles, the collective I, and other subversive craft choices to pursue the unpinnable in their poetry. They will explore the generative approaches that worked for them as they broke open against perspective and form.
Participants
Sarah Blake is the author of three books of poetry: In Springtime, Let's Not Live on Earth, and Mr. West. She was awarded an NEA fellowship for poetry in 2013. She is also the author of two novels, Clean Air and Naamah, winner of a National Jewish Book Award. She lives outside of London.
Rachel Mennies is the author of The Naomi Letters and The Glad Hand of God Points Backwards, winner of the Walt McDonald First-Book Prize in Poetry and finalist for a National Jewish Book Award. She works as an adjunct professor and freelance writer, and serves as a member of AGNI's editorial staff.
Arisa White is a Cave Canem graduate fellow and author of Who's Your Daddy and Home Is Where You Queer Your Heart. She collaborates with other artists to expand readership for poetry and to center the narratives of queer IBPOC. White is an assistant professor of creative writing at Colby College.
C. Russell Price lives in Chicago and is the author of Tonight, We Fuck the Trailer Park Out of Each Other (SRP) and oh, you thought this was a date?!: Apocalypse Poems (Northwestern University Press). They currently serve on boards with the Ragdale Foundation and The Anarchist Review of Books.
Wo Chan is a poet and drag performer. They are a winner of the 2020 Nightboat Poetry Prize and the author of Togetherness (2022). Wo has received fellowships from MacDowell, New York Foundation of the Arts, Kundiman, The Asian American Writers Workshop, and elsewhere. Find them @theillustriouspearl
