ariana benson
@literari_ana
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black southern ecopoet twting thru deep shyness 🪴🌚 *BLACK PASTORAL (UGA Press), @cavecanempoets prize, NBCC Leonard Prize Finalist* 1881 🩵 *multivariate nerd
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cover reveal:
09/15/23 — Black Pastoral 🌷🌹🥀
endless thanks to artist Debora Moore for allowing me to use this stunning image of her installation of handblown glass flowers! and to the wonderful design team for their subtle, lovely choices!
@UGAPress
@cavecanempoets
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when I see and submit to lit mag calls specifically reserved for BIPOC, I always wonder if the (mostly white) editors have really thought critically about the gravity and implications of such a call… like, are you really ready to read deeply colored (in all ways) writing? 1/5
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there’s a word for exactly this feeling in the dictionary of obscure sorrows:
anemoia (n.): nostalgia for a time you’ve never known
i think we’re all feeling deep anemoia right now. the question becomes then, how we can build the world we miss, to create the era we long for.
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floating. as in, my feet haven’t fully touched the ground since I got this news. BLACK PASTORAL in the lineage of the Cave Canem Prize?! in the most literal sense, a dream come true. 🌿🌿🌿
thank you
@WilliePerdomo
@cavecanempoets
— I am deeply honored and grateful, always 💐
😃🙌🏿
@WilliePerdomo
selects
@literari_ana
as the winner of the 2022
#CaveCanemPoetryPrize
for her manuscript Black Pastoral. Ariana will receive $1,000 & publication by
@UGAPress
in Fall 2023! Learn more about the winning manuscript:
#AHomeForBlackPoetry
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wish i could go back and tell my younger self—the child who hid under tables writing haiku about snowfall & rainbows—that she’d one day hold a book with her name on it
Black Pastoral, by Ariana Benson 🥀
with these poems, i honor our wildest dreams.
…
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never really know how to word these kind of tweets but uhhh... I got into Tin House!! (for poetry)
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poetry requires a lot of waiting.
waiting for your work to be accepted/published after acceptance, waiting for just the right line to come to you, waiting for folks to read your work...
the poems are teaching me to practice patience, on the page and in the world.
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but which pieces are chosen from these calls, and why? are mags really willing to investigate the ways their “tastes and aesthetics” uphold whiteness, even in selecting works by non-white writers? or are we expected to operate within the “color-neutral” bounds already set… 3/5
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i’m a ‘23 ruth lilly finalist
@PoetryFound
🌻 hoping it starts to feel more real the more I give it voice. but the gratitude? real and felt 🤍
i’m delighted to share this honor with brilliant poet-peers ✨
@edythejai
&
@bealestreetpoet
✨and all of this year’s amazing finalists!
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been just sitting with this one for a while bc w h o a… but Colorado Review said yes (!!) to my first ever submission to them?? 🥺🙌🏾
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if a piece submitted to call is initially read as “not a good fit for us,” who stops and asks WHY a Black or brown poem might not fit their current tone? does anyone consider that the journal’s aesthetic might be filtering out the work of writers of color? 4/5
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which then engenders the need for the special BIPOC call, as an attempted back-end corrective…? i guess i’m hoping to challenge editors to think very critically about what they’re asking of BIPOC writers, and to, first and foremost, ask more of themselves. 5/5
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just gratitude and joy. that’s all I have, all I want to share.
thank you to everyone who’s ever read or shared a poem I wrote, who’s lifted me up in any way. let’s continue to be here for each other.
a Ruth Lilly fellow, alongside these brilliant poets. a dream. a blessing. ❣️
Please join us in congratulating the five 2023 Ruth Lilly & Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellows, Bhion Achimba, Roda Avelar, Ariana Benson, Chrysanthemum, and Willie Lee Kinard III! 🎉 🎉 🎉 🎉 🎉
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ostensibly, the intention is to give more BIPOC the opportunity to publish in their mag, though this is less an “opportunity” and more, at minimum, a mutually beneficial exchange in which the mag is able to diversify their pub credits, and the author gets a piece out there. 2/5
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this poem is a love letter to Black love. to Blackness as rich and unending as the field. may it thrive as we do. as we must.
i’m honored to have it be today’s
@POETSorg
Poem-a-Day. endless thanks to
@pswordwoman
for seeing me, as she always has ♥️
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pictured in today’s NYT: my beautiful mom and me, smiling our identical smiles as usual
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it’s Black Pastoral’s pub day 🥀🌹🌷
i’ve been so overwhelmed this week by love, support, *Black* joy—i’m still smiling just as hard as i was in these pics from the launch 😂
what a dream. what a blessing to share it with my family, my best friend, this community. i am so full.
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got my first poem acceptance of 2021!! and for my first attempt at this form! 🙌🏾✨
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in lieu of an awful bear-related pun, a simple announcement: i’ll be heading to study Poetry
@MFA_WUSTL
in the Fall 🐻💥
ridiculously excited to study with Carl Phillips, Mary Jo Bang, and Niki Herd!!
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🗣️ so… i wrote an experimental essay…
about Black animé fans (👩🏾🎤) and the concept of schematic representation…
& it will be my first (🫣) prose publication…
& it got picked up by (❗️) the
@kenyonreview
…
& my point is: i can’t wait to share it with you all very soon! 💌
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this thread is fascinating and important. & the replies illuminate the paradox of the initial question: how to write about something that is defined *almost exclusively* not by what it itself is, but what it is *not*? what it negates and excludes?
POETS:
Who are white poets writing about whiteness? 👀
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🪻 poets, friends, and poet-friends who’ve been waiting patiently on the pre-order link for BLACK PASTORAL, my forthcoming debut collection, here it is! 🪻
➡️ ⬅️
❕use code 08SALE through June 30 for 50% off all
@UGAPress
books!❕
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new poem in the beautiful SP23 issue of
@Colorado_Review
🍑
here’s Sweet Field Anemoia, the last poem in Black Pastoral (release date coming soon 🌾)
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to me, poetry is inherently an act
of translation: of making the unspeakable—the unspoken of—into language.
this is why we must read and study *poetry* in **translation**. this unparalleled “doubling” makes it no less than alchemical. it’s poetry at its most other-worldly.
poets: when someone asks you “what is poetry”, what is your answer? my current one is “an exploration of the possibilities of language and sound”. I’m curious about others’.
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nyc folks!! join me for the launch of my debut collection next Tuesday, 9/12! i’ll be reading love poems and nature poems and love nature poems 🤍🌳🤍🌳
Check out our
#PoetryNearYou
Pick of the Week: Join Poetry Coalition member
@cavecanempoets
in celebrating Ariana Benson's BLACK PASTORAL, winner of the 2022 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. 9/12 at 6 p.m. ET at
@SchomburgCenter
or via live-stream. Register here:
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see also: poets
nobody:
horror movie writers: what if there was a deer
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few questions:
1. when you say “other ethnicities,” you mean other than… who, exactly?
2. what about the cover indicates i’m writing to “explain” my “experience” for “everyone else?” who do you imagine is my audience?
3. why do you assume the book is not about my love of nature?
@literari_ana
But this begs the question 🙋♀️ why must writers of other ethnicities write about their experience of their own ethnicity for everyone else to explain it to them? Can’t they write about other things if they want like a love of nature etc.
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just putting it out there quickly that i’d LOVE to be on podcasts, give interviews, visit schools, do readings, etc. this summer in the run-up to BLACK PASTORAL’s release!
🪷🪷🪷
so… please invite me! i’m thoughtful & i make good jokes & i have cool stuff to say re: poems
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**new poem** out today with
@yalereview
this is one of my favorite poems in all of Black Pastoral (which, wow, is really coming out this fall), and one of the last to make it into the book. it felt like the missing piece in many ways. thrilled it found such a wonderful home 💐
"I can no less forgive my mind than can a saw forgive its blade
for what it has unmade."
From "Still Life with Unidentified Flora" by
@literari_ana
, TYR's Poem of the Week.
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submitted my poetry manuscript for the first time!! surreal feeling to send over a year’s worth of work into the void 😅
(also quite certain I missed a typo of some sort despite checking like 10 times)
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Sat on this one for a while:
I have TWO poems in this month’s POETRY Magazine 🌟 still feels like a dream
Here’s one, in conversation with Frank O’Hara about my beloved Norfolk, Virginia, how it’s changing and being changed. What blooms despite.
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quick tweet bc i’m still kind of in shock… endlessly grateful to
@oak_spring
for naming me the 2022 Eliza Moore Fellow, an award that comes with a 2-8 week residency on their grounds (aka nature poet heaven!!) and a $10,000 grant to support my work 🌷🌿🌷
We're thrilled to announce that poet
@literari_ana
(left) has received our 2022 Eliza Moore Fellowship and that scholar Phoebe Springstubb (right) has received our 2022 Stacy Lloyd III Fellowship for Bibliographic Study! Learn more about them at .
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looking for a space to discuss nature, landscape, history, ecology, and the Black South? 🍂🌾🪺
join the Cave Canem Black Pastoral reading group, held via Zoom, Tuesdays 12:30-1:15 est thru the month of October!
register here:
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many, many thanks to the lovely
@angelafloresfs
,
@GarbLs
, guest editor Esther Belin, and everyone else
@poetrymagazine
. and ❤️ to my brilliant
@Tin_House
2021 cohort for helping me hone this poem.
here’s a snippet of Hotbeds in Norfolk, Virginia.
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reading from Black Pastoral tonight @ Boston University—would love to see you there 💛💚❤️
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no but like y’all don’t what it means that I got to even be in the room with all these people… let alone be *in* the picture with them!
they say don’t meet your heroes, but sometimes your heroes turn out to incredible, loving, brilliant people. and that is miraculous.
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Bluest Nude was my absolute favorite collection of the year 🪻
major congratulations to Ama Codjoe for the well-deserved
@Poet_Major
Ama Codjoe has won the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize for Bluest Nude (
@Milkweed_Books
, 2022), which recognizes the most outstanding poetry book published in the U.S. the previous year & has a $25,000 stipend. Shane McCrae
@akasomeguy
, January Gill O’Neill
@januaryoneil
, and…
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drafted my first poem in months a few days into my first writing residency…
a kind of peace I could really get used to…
and having this view certainly didn’t hurt.
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update: this reading was **everything**
it solidified my love of undergrads & of teaching. it fortified my faith in the power & impact of poetry on young minds.
not too long ago, I was where they are, being awed and opened. seeing it from this end was gratifying. humbling. 🖤
reading from Black Pastoral tonight @ Boston University—would love to see you there 💛💚❤️
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so this very cool thing happened!! thrilled to have my very flowery (in the literal sense 🌷🌼) poem selected by the nature poetry legend herself,
@aimeenez
as winner of the PHR Poetry Contest!
can’t wait to share this remixed form, the Golden Spade with you all 🌱
Congratulations to the winners of PHR's 2021 Poetry Contest judged by
@aimeenez
!
1ST: "Still Life with Bouquet, Golden Spade" by
@literari_ana
2ND: "February 23, 2020" by
@Aswagaawy
3RD: "Ni hao" by
@mspicone
All three poems will be published in PHR in the coming months!
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am a semi-finalist! on an already poetry-filled day, this news is perfectly timed!
thank you
@92Y
and congratulations to all semi-finalists and winners!! 💐
Announcing the winners of
@92Y
Discovery Contest—
@jadareneeholy
,
@sashabursh
, April Goldman and Kristina Martino.
Runners-up are
@DG_Schonning
and
@CropTopAssassin
.
With thanks to Timothy Donnelly,
@notsumatra
,
@PBW_Poet
,
@VChangPoet
and Brian Teare.
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wrote a sonnet about my least favorite insects, flies! a cool species that has a false ant on each wing! 🪰
I want to practice looking closely, even at the things that may seem ugly at first…
🤍 to
@SplitThisRock
for including me in their Poem of the Week series!
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so I made a little riff-form: the golden spade! after T. Hayes’ golden shovel, which, of course, is after the peerless Gwendolyn Brooks
it had the honor of winning
@PorterHouseLit
poetry prize!
read with the stunning painting that inspired it: “Say Her Name” by Jennifer Packer
"we the garden and the gold / -en spade used to dig. we the tiny lurking mantis / veiled in verdure, praying underblade."
—From "Still Life with Bouquet, Golden Spade (out of frame)" by
@literari_ana
winner of our 2021 Poetry Prize judged by
@aimeenez
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okay I’m finally here @ AWP—let’s do this! say hi if you see me! am a teeny bit shy, but very friendly 👉🏾👈🏾🥺
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writers, trying to come to terms with their latest rejection:
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so, I won a poetry prize!! (my 1st 🥺) all thanks to
@ShenandoahWLU
& judge
@Free_KGD
for seeing something special in this poem
this love poem speaks to the heart of where I grew up—the 757. my grandma lives down Moses Grandy Trail. proud to be product of this rich history ✊🏾🖤
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& a hearty thank you to
@92NYPoetry
and the wonderful judges for naming me a runner-up!
this was my last year of eligibility, so it’s a great way to go out ✨
Drum-roll!
Announcing the winners of
@92ndStreetY
2023 DISCOVERY CONTEST:
@LucasLJorgensen
,
@sabzi_k
, Jenna Lanzaro and
@heckaseuss
.
Runners up are
@Austin_Araujo
,
@literari_ana
,
@david_gorin
and
@aliberryzheng
. CONGRATS to the winners, and thank you so much each applicant!
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Inside the brightest nook
of themselves, they are
everything they did
right, everything that
made sense at the time
still bringing
residual joy.
-Kamilah Aisha Moon, “Fireflies” —Sept. 2021 🔅
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i got to talk to two of the *coolest* people in the realm of poetry about, my debut book, soap opera baby swaps and spiritfarer 🥹
@MoonsAtDusk
&
@brittanyroger_
are generous, brilliant legends 💟
i hope y’all have as much fun listening to the episode as we did making it 🌟
2023 Ruth Lilly & Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellow Ariana Benson (
@literari_ana
) joins
@brittanyroger_
and
@MoonsAtDusk
to discuss nature, artistic influences, sensuality, and soap operas.
Here she reads from BLACK PASTORAL.
Listen to the episode:
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cutting greens by Lucille Clifton | Poetry Foundation
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people said hi! and were so nice! I had many laughs and made friends. heard amazing poetry! got new books! 5/5 stars would def recommend! 🙂
(disclaimer: recommendation not specific awp itself per se, just my own experience of it)
okay I’m finally here @ AWP—let’s do this! say hi if you see me! am a teeny bit shy, but very friendly 👉🏾👈🏾🥺
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normally, i don’t reply to these kinds of tweets. i’m doing so here in hopes that writers of “other ethnicities” than mine will read, take a moment, and consider how these kind of “questions” (like the one asked of me) are not as innocuous as they may seem.
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thank you to
@bardsbesidebars
&
@The_Rumpus
for including my poem in their wonderful
#NationalPoetryMonth
curation! if you haven’t been following along, go back and read the previous weeks’ poems ✨
(and check out my poem, a villanelle in the voice of an insect 🐛)
Today, on day 24 of National Poetry Month, we've got a selection by
@literari_ana
from the forthcoming BLACK PASTORAL. Head on over to
@The_Rumpus
to read Ariana's "Boll Weevil's Theodicy." Use the link to jump straight there!
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my second poem in this issue of POETRY uses one of my favorite devices, persona, to explore tobacco slavery in Virginia.
I think about it a lot—what the land and plants saw and felt during that time.
thank you again
@poetrymagazine
for giving this piece a beautiful home 🌿🐾
How do I feel
to the touch: your calluses
like pestle, your palm, mortar.
—Ariana Benson
@literari_ana
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Super lovely to see my name on this list of finalists!! Congratulations to all the poets honored here!!
We’re thrilled to announce the finalists for the 2021 Pink Poetry Prize. Congratulations to these 10 poets, selected from an unprecedented 700 (!) submissions.
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this was such a lovely surprise!!
thank you so much
@coppernickel
for the Editors’ Prize all that you do.
Wayne and all the editorial team have created a beautiful home for so many pieces, including mine. cannot commend you enough for your rare kindness and warmth.
♥️
We are excited to announce the Editors' Prize winners for issue 35!
Swipe through for the spotlights ➡️
+ Click the link in bio to read
@mollyebeckwith
’s story “Amelies” and one of
@literari_ana
’s three poems from the issue, “Love Poem in the Black Field (II).”
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💜 this is definitely the win i’m proudest of so far as a poet. by a mile and then some. bc it’s from us. 💜
chosen by the one and only Tim Seibles (hope those of you at
#AWP
are going to his celebration panel ✨) as winner of the 2022
@FuriousFlowerPC
Poetry Prize!!!
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very grateful to
@poetswritersinc
and
@ReesesBookClub
for this grant!! and honored to be among writers I admire deeply 🌟
the hard truth is that it’s so difficult to break out in the lit world without funding. so opportunities like these are so crucial, esp. for BIPOC women ✊🏾
Congratulations to Open Door Career Advancement Grantees! P&W and
@ReesesBookClub
's The Readership are delighted to offer grants to 12 promising BIPOC women writers. Learn more:
#PWOpenDoor
#BIPOCWriters
#Womenwriters
#IndigenousWriters
#WritersofColor
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Bringing this energy into the new year and beyond. Don’t snatch a “no” from the jaws of “yes”. Your first acceptance (of a poem, job app, anything) will always come from you.
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funny how the “diversity killed merit” crowd never considers that inclusivity in Publishing™ may indicate a move *toward* objectivity, not away from it.
especially knowing what we KNOW abt the long history of identity-based gatekeeping in literature. hilarious. laugh with me.
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one of my (few) major AWP regrets is forgetting to ask for a picture with
@seminewblack
. though she did sign 2 books for me! her practice of generosity and kindness is one I hope to model in life, even beyond poetry 🌷
congratulations to Evie Shockley!
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finally forced myself to apply for a thing I really REALLY want and wow, I kinda hate **wanting** things. feels a bit too much like longing…
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omg, my oyster poem!! thank you so much for sharing,
@earthandstars
!! you always seem to find a poem’s heart lines 🤍🤍
and major thank you to
@Madelinksi
for giving me the title prompt that birthed this poem!! i had so much fun with this one 🌊
"I’ll admit, this is why I’m too in love with the idea /
of silence. Of opening my mouth and spilling nothing but brine /and maybe the occasional gem,"
@literari_ana
in
@GreatRiverRev
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💜💜💜
🥳 We're thrilled to announce the 2022 Furious Flower Poetry Prize winner, Ariana Benson!
.
🎉 Arianna received the 2020 Graybeal-Gowen Poetry Prize and the 2021 Porter House Review Poetry Prize.
.
📕 You can find her work in Copper Nickel, Colorado Review, Tinderbox, & more!
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so, so excited to be a part of this cohort!! and working with one of the most radical lit mags out rn in
@seventhwavemag
✨🙌🏾
We are thrilled to introduce our eight Fall 2021 Editorial Residents:
@sunummm
, Brian Dang,
@bobuqsayed
,
@literari_ana
,
@lianneyu
,
@em____dash
, hannah rubin, and
@sabzi_k
. We can’t wait for you to get to know their voices. 🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊
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love that people seem to be love this—let’s extend that love to Debora Moore! 🖤
here’s her website where you can see more of her work:
check out more pieces, and leave a kind message about her beautiful art, if you feel so inclined! 🪷
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thrilled to have received a scholarship to this year’s
@MCWConf
! can’t wait to write with Saretta Morgan and my workshop cohort 🪴
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✨ thank you so much for this (my first ever!!) pushcart nomination, West Branch ✨
We are happy to share our 2021 Pushcart Prize Nominations! Congratulations to these writers whose work continues to intrigue and inspire.
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💌 a note about this moment: i’ve spent the past few weeks steeped in Black poetry, at Cave Canem and Furious Flower—learning, making family of strangers, loving and being loved on…
🪻 poets, friends, and poet-friends who’ve been waiting patiently on the pre-order link for BLACK PASTORAL, my forthcoming debut collection, here it is! 🪻
➡️ ⬅️
❕use code 08SALE through June 30 for 50% off all
@UGAPress
books!❕
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okay, i’ll bite—
summary of my 2022 in poetry ✨
i’m trying to learn how to celebrate myself more, and it really was a remarkable year in my writing life, so here goes…
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I’m so glad this line has resonated. I think it’s one of the central questions of Black Pastoral as a whole.
thank you
@mrAFalomo
and thank you
@coppernickel
for publishing three (!!) of the pieces from this “Love Poem in the Black Field” suite 🌾
“—but is beauty enough / Reason to declare a living thing my own?”
—Ariana Benson in the fall 2022 issue of Copper Nickel, which is studded with so many ✨💎🤩
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congratulations to
@sabzi_k
on the selection of her debut collection SELF-MYTHOLOGY for publication 🏵️
i’ve met many people on this poetry path— Saba is a rare one whose poetry moves something deep within me *&* whose spirit & kindness shine effortlessly. she’s the real deal💛🧡
SELF-MYTHOLOGY is being published!!! Thank you to the illustrious
@pswordwoman
for selecting my book and being so kind to me on the phone. Thank you to
@uarkpress
for being SELF-MYTHOLOGY’s home. I’m in disbelief. I am so happy 🧿🙏🏽✨
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super excited to be a guest on
@TPQ20POD
— a pod I’ve listened to every single episode of! (if you can’t tell, i’m a real fan ❤️🔥)
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and then one day this summer, this:
still don’t have the words, but even after holding this news nearly six months, not a day passes where I don’t think about it and smile.
@cavecanempoets
and
@UGAPress
have been incredible shepherds of my work, my dream. thank you ♥️
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just left the best workshop i’ve had all year
@SpelmanEnglish
on Fugitivity and Poetics by the brilliant
@YesAurielle
i hope y’all know how much of a true light they are, how they pass that light to others with such gentle ease. their way with words, with ideas, with people 🖤
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tonight @ 7est in the virtual-verse: a reading and conversation with two of the kindest, most generous poets i’ve met on this journey 💜
(& yes, they are both **brilliant** poets, but I’ve been thinking about what I value in people lately, and how to speak/move accordingly 🖤 )
TONIGHT! Don't miss
#ObsidianVoices
—Resonance, in celebration of the Furious Flower Poetry Prize! Featuring Ariana Benson and Benin Lemus with L. Renée as moderator. RSVP for this free online reading & conversation at
@FuriousFlowerPC
@literari_ana
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so honored to have 2 poems in this year’s Black Voices Series at World Literature Today (!!)
one explores the Black pastoral and boyhood
the other is a breakdown of the word “mercy” that questions the ways grace is demanded of us, and how we take forgiveness into our own hands
WLT’s Black Voices Series, guest-edited by
@MShiferraw
, returns today. Read 2 poems by Ariana Benson. “There is a kind of poetry in a turning that leaves a body redder than / before. Golden drupes ripen, orchards flush rouge.”
@literari_ana
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The poems in this book, if you can imagine it, are even more gorgeous and breathtaking than the cover itself! ✨ Janel’s collection is a beautiful depiction of family, generational memory, and how we hold entire histories in our bodies. Add it to your bookshelves!! ❤️
LINEAGE OF RAIN officially releases TODAY! I am so grateful and excited to share this chapbook with you all!
✨ Get your copy via
@haymarketbooks
your local independent bookstore, or from me at
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this poem… utterly shattering.
Grateful to
@BrooklynPoets
for republishing my poem "The Dog" (along with a recording of me reading it in a creepy, early-morning whisper) as part of this Poet-of-the-Week feature 🖤
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@TeaFranco
glad I’m not the only one who gets this feeling, and also reads it as unpreparedness for the work.
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so... I know we're collectively tired of bird poems. and I know that every bird poem thinks it's the exception to the bird poem fatigue rule.
that said, this bird poem I just wrote? it goes.
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✨lastly: I hope this can encourage poets without an MFA to keep going. to keep seeking out community and light in your own way.
i just started my MFA & am LOVING it so far, but it’s important to note that BP came before, that there are so many paths we can take—all beautiful✨
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also, it’s important for me to say that this book would not exist without the knowledge, brilliance, and encouragements of so many Black women poets, many of whom blessed me with their light and love through workshops I did in my DIY MFA year:
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Slowly, but surely, finding my way into twitter’s poetry community. So much talent and dedication and love for poems! Will get up the courage to start sharing my own soon 🥺🥰
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@RubenQuesada
Black Pastoral, winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, out from
@UGAPress
Fall 2023 🌱
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this poem. my entire manuscript grew from this one poem.
i live to write the “other” poems 🌱
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i don’t totally disagree with a desire to return to this. i do wonder why we moved away from it & which voices the move affected?
thinking mainly about marginalized writers who often must explain their work through the lens of “aboutness” to be recognized by dominant gazes.
Did you know there used to be poem collections that weren't tightly interlaced monothematic regiments of feeling? Give me the sprawl and palimpsests, our minds unspooled...
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somehow I also missed this, until I got my beautiful copies in the mail!! thank you so much
@ParanoidxTree
for bringing my poem about finding hope in outer space to life this way, through such tenderly wrought visuals 🌑✨
Missed last month’s zine? Print copies and pay-what-you-want digital copies are still available on our site. Free copies are 100% guilt free!
Get “Black Pastoral: On Mars” by
@literari_ana
here:
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SHARAN STRANGE 🖤🖤 deserves a tweet by herself.
before her class, I hadn’t written a poem since I was 13 years old. what she reawakened in me all those years later will never sleep again. my truest teacher in every sense of the word.
if you don’t know, now you know.
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slowly finding my way into this archive presented as book, as poetic chorus. reading the TOC gave chills. especially as I touched the name of my teacher, the legend who showed me how to rly *read* a poem, how to sing it to life: Sharan Strange. know her, if you don’t already.
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now I’ve never really been a plate-poster, but this was my first solo thanksgiving and I think I beat the “I look like I can’t cook—that’s accurate” allegations…
so here it is 🍽️😌
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@pswordwoman
,
@TianaClarkPoet
, Vievee Francis, Amber Flora Thomas,
@remicawriter
,
@MShiferraw
, Saretta Morgan
if this book resounds, it does so in the echo of their words 🖤
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my brilliant, sweet, talented friend
@sabzi_k
is a 92Y Discovery Prize Winner!!! 👏🏾✨👏🏾✨
if you don’t know her work yet, go read it and be changed. 😌
i don’t quite yet have the words to express what this award means to me. it’s a lot of feelings. (i think all i said on the phone call was “aaaaaaa”)
i’m grateful and honored and just so so excited 💛✨🧿
thank you so much to
@92NYPoetry
and the judges!!!
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major congratulations
@BByrdlong
💐💐💐 cannot wait to read Strange Flowers!!
Results for YYB 2023 Open Reading Period in Poetry are in!!! Thank you to ALL submitters. The strength of this year's submissions were incredible. Thank you so much for your art and hearts and minds in the world!
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“how do white poets come to know themselves in the ways required?”
so, so much in this question from
@bardsbesidebars
…
sharing so that those who need to might find the time to sit with it.
@literari_ana
@YesAurielle
How does a white poet write about whiteness compellingly when it takes a me/you/some other person of color to define the poet along this axis, when there's an estrangement within the poet themself whiteness creates? How do white poets come to know themselves in the way required?
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“If Black lives matter, don’t we want to know what those lives entail? ...the details, the minutia, the grand moments, its longings, its forebodings.”
—Vievee Francis
so many names learned bc of how they died. Daunte Wright’s memory must be the one he made for himself, in life
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i sadly do not have it in me to make an AWP schedule flyer (shared event posters will have to suffice) but i am looking very much forward to seeing all your cute little poet faces in person 🤠
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the quietest little poem I’ve ever written is about this exact phenomenon. it is also, naturally, a love poem🌳
The phenomenon called "the shyness of the crown" where the trees incredibly avoid touching.
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