Yes, the word politics leaves me colorless and blech in the playground — so, I’m grateful to Sam Truitt and Michael Ruby for the invitation to play with something that I don’t understand.
Personal, political, and climate conditions change continuously, as does poetry, its syntaxes, and uses of metaphor. Within certain ranges, readers simply accommodate change.
As a dynamic queer Black artist from the Bay Area, Vanessa received national attention in 2017 with her organization Reclaim UGLY, which was featured in Vice, Wear Your Voice Magazine, and RaceBaitr, and which educates communities about what uglification is and how it works to marginalize people who don’t fit the normative notions of beauty or respectability, rejecting those standards and finding a way to feel beautiful in one’s own skin. Prior to founding Reclaim UGLY, Vanessa was the senior and co-managing editor for feminist magazines Black Girl Dangerous and Everyday Feminism, an instructor at multiple Bay Area Community College and grassroots art organizations, the fundraising and development coordinator for the Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project, and the artistic director of the queer Black liberatory theatre project, Congregation of Liberation.
You say you wanna poli-po-asis: poetry and politics
by Edwin Torres
Yes, the word politics leaves me colorless and blech in the playground — so, I’m grateful to Sam Truitt and Michael Ruby for the invitation to play with something that I don’t understand.
Metaphor and social media in the 2020 election
by James Sherry
Personal, political, and climate conditions change continuously, as does poetry, its syntaxes, and uses of metaphor. Within certain ranges, readers simply accommodate change.
Jack Foley
Orphic Sonnets 1–10, from a work in progress
ORPHIC SONNET #1
I am a man who does not know himself
I am the grief that finds its way to tears
I am the poet who descends
I am the loss that cannot know the reason
I am the shadow in the deepening caves
I am the animal that roams its cage
Black queer healing poetics of Vanessa Rochelle Lewis
Black Healing October is now
By Isadora Dean with Margaret Rhee
As a dynamic queer Black artist from the Bay Area, Vanessa received national attention in 2017 with her organization Reclaim UGLY, which was featured in Vice, Wear Your Voice Magazine, and RaceBaitr, and which educates communities about what uglification is and how it works to marginalize people who don’t fit the normative notions of beauty or respectability, rejecting those standards and finding a way to feel beautiful in one’s own skin. Prior to founding Reclaim UGLY, Vanessa was the senior and co-managing editor for feminist magazines Black Girl Dangerous and Everyday Feminism, an instructor at multiple Bay Area Community College and grassroots art organizations, the fundraising and development coordinator for the Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project, and the artistic director of the queer Black liberatory theatre project, Congregation of Liberation.
'Poetry in Hell'
An excerpt from Shmuel Marvil's 'The Street' (circa 1943)
Translation from Yiddish by Sarah Traister Moskovitz