Chase Berggrun
@patriphobe
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• poet • trans lesbian • author of R E D (erasures of Bram Stoker's Dracula) ( @Birdsllc 2018) • she/her • free palestine •
Brooklyn, NY
Joined April 2011
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My debut poetry collection, R E D, is a real & tangible object out in the world & available for sale from
@Birdsllc
! It was hard & sometimes painful work to bring this lil baby of mine to life, & it's an honor to share her with all of you. For more info:
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What’s happening at Columbia is the kind of resistance we need to cultivate on every campus & every public space—an irrepressible, furious, joyous, effervescent refusal of genocide, a reclamation: we protest because life is precious & protecting it is our only responsibility
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And yet. The New York Times obscures the reason. They try to deny and minimize his sacrifice. We will not let them. This man set his flesh on fire FOR PALESTINE. Honor him and his conviction.
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I am so afraid of what we're going to be waking up to in the morning. What the people of Rafah will find underneath the rubble. There is no "evacuation of civilians" happening, because civilians are the target. This is wholesale genocidal slaughter. And we are responsible for it.
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I’m out of jail, finally, and I just want to say that these students are the lifesblood, the bearing heart, I am so grateful for them and their courage and would defend them with my body any day without question. Free Palestine.
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Presented without comment …….
just kidding, fuck the New York Times
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this complicit bullshit, from the incoming president of PEN America, is some of the more abject, insidious normalization I have seen so far.
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today I am four (4!) whole years sober and I am so existentially grateful!
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truly, overwhelmingly obscene
@hannahdreier
@nytimes
@stillsarita
@NewYorker
@sarahanneconway
@city_bureau
@invinst
@Reuters
@washingtonpost
Congratulations to
@nytimes
.
#Pulitzer
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You’re on earth. There’s no cure for that.
—Samuel Beckett, Endgame
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Being Gerald Stern’s assistant for the last half-decade has been the sweetest, most beautiful dream. I am so lucky (lucky, lucky) to have been able to sit beside him and bask in his kindness, the way love was etched into everything he did. I’ll miss him wildly (1/x)
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defend trans lives physically, emotionally, financially, spiritually. put yourself in harm’s way for us. support our welfare with your money & your inherent safety. prioritize the well-being of trans women of color before your own. share the screaming. sharpen our knives.
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Here's one of my absolute favorite couplets in R E D, erased from Chapter XXIII of Bram Stoker's Dracula
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Gentle (the most remarkably gentle) reminder that Sylvia Plath once wrote what to me is one of the most near-perfect poems in the universe.
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"We need to reject the binary" is textbook pinkwashing. PEN (and Boylan) weaponize queerness to delegitimize Palestinian struggle. There are more than two stories about Palestine, but the story they tell about 'Israel' is a settler-colonial genocidal fiction.
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staring at my houseplants, listening to death cab very very quietly, overwhelmed by the fact that the word “ultramarine” does not mean “very blue” but “beyond the sea” because the lapis lazuli used to make the pigment was imported to Europe from Afghanistan
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found out a few days ago that 2 poems, both of which I wrote after getting sober, will be published in a forthcoming issue of APR. unbelievably grateful. the intersection of poetry & sobriety is a kind of spiritual archaeology for me. each heavy shovelful brings me closer to God.
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PEN America is a 43 million dollar non-profit.
I won the
@PENamerica
Prison Writing Contest in 2022 and never received the $250 prize, even after much back and forth via email, which continues to this day. I know of at least one other first place winner who never received their prize money, either.
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Favorite presses that make really really beautiful chapbooks???
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I've pulled a forthcoming essay on erasure from Poetry Magazine for the time being and will not be working with them until these demands are met. Sign the boycott here:
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I’m really excited to share, finally, this essay in the latest
@poetrymagazine
, an essay that took an entire year of my life to write and edit, on (amongst other things) addiction, suicidality, and the poetry of Paul Celan.
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an incredible take from an organization that literally dragged a disabled protester out of a room by the chair last night
American University has banned all indoor protest in a move PEN America's Kristen Shahverdian says will limit dialogue and clamp down on free expression:
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I'm building a syllabus for a class on trans and non-binary poetics this fall! What are some individual poems (or essays, or performance pieces) that you think it would be a mistake to exclude?
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Hopkins isn't a poet that I'm too familiar with but I just read this out loud to myself in the dark and felt close to God, so I'm gonna have to change this quick. Where do I start?
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Sharon Olds, sunflower of sunflowers, reading a poem from R E D 🌻🌹🌻 what a joy what a joy what a joy to hear my sweet teacher bless into the air the thing that I made. So grateful!
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Sober six months today. Every day has been a gift, a lesson. I’ve never known such joy. My book launch is tomorrow. That I am alive is a miracle: everything else astonishes me. I need more synonyms for grateful, because these days I use it more than most other words.
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immensely proud of my Writers Bloc comrades today 🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸
GENOCIDE THEN, GENOCIDE NOW
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There's a noxious op-ed about PEN America from the New York Times that I won't link to (boycott, divest, unsubscribe), but I will share one particular quote: "There is room for more than one point of view on the question of genocide." 🤮
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Today is the 3 year anniversary of R E D! I'm still proud of this little book of blood and pain and victory. I wanted to celebrate by sharing an outtake that didn't make it into the manuscript, an erasure of Bram Stoker's short story "Dracula's Guest."
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A new favorite erasure poem just dropped
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I’m very obviously not the first person to note this, but a reminder that distancing, disengaging, & refusing to acknowledge or respond to criticism is a kind of flexing of power, & it’s a tool of white supremacy.
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I have 4 poems in the new issue of
@poetrymagazine
—alongside unbelievable work by
@Justafknminute
, Marilyn Nelson,
@JulianThePoet
,
@katiefar
,
@cawkward_rich
, & two by
@23cschwartz
that I've reread over & over. Here's one of mine, the scariest of the bunch:
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Imagine feeling like you had a hard week after declining to even tiptoe toward the vicinity of a place under CONSTANT BOMBARDMENT
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2018 has been so hard. It’s also been unequivocally the best year of my life. I am 10 & 1/2 months sober today. I published my first book, I went on tour, I wrote new work. I grew, I listened. I fell in love. I came to believe. I built a new life under gratitude’s umbrella. Wow.
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Anna Kamienska tr. by Tomasz Krzeszowski and Desmond Graham
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50 years ago, Paul Celan dove off the Pont Mirabeau into the Seine. Today, I celebrate and honor the life of a poet who saved mine many times over. Here are a few of my favorite poems:
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Having spent the day at the Columbia encampment—good god, I am so so so proud. They have a vision of the future beyond us, beyond themselves—they are organized and capable and they are furiously building. We need them to protect them, and stay out of their way.
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If yr white & writing a poem about Cville today, please leave it in yr notebook. This is not an opportunity to gain visibility for yr work.
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FREE MOSAB NOW
The Palestinian Gazan essayist and poet, Mosab Abu Toha, was kidnapped by the Israeli army while fleeing to southern Gaza. Last month, he was in the USA on a tour. He has been recognized with several awards, including the Palestine Book Award 2022. He also received the Arrowsmith…
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Sobbing, uncontrollably. Every poem ever written is a pale imitation of this.
In Palestine, steadfastness knows no age.
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I want to emphatically & formally invite the New York University Creative Writing Program (
@NYUCWP
) to stand with students, & with Palestine, unconditionally. Writers & writing institutions have no more excuses left. It's time to take the most basic of risks and pick a side.
The obscene violence NYU allowed to be unleashed on their faculty & students last night is overwhelming. I have never been so ashamed to be an alumna of
@NYUCWP
. But I am proud to be a teacher, & believe more than ever that defending students is the part & parcel of that duty.
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alternately: m’allard
*tipping my hat to the beautiful duck in central park* m'andarin
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One of Rachel Corrie’s last emails to her parents:
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I'm 30 days sober today & the whole world feels a thousand times more visible, tangible, feels like a house that I can someday call a home.
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supposed to be putting together a presentation so instead of course I spent 45 minutes making this
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It’s been an honor to work with the principled writers & translators withdrawing their works from consideration for the PEN America Literary awards, a herculean effort for everyone involved. Many of them have signed a letter, published here:
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never in a million years will I be interested in a rapist or sexual abuser’s redemption story.
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the thrift shop dude just made me cry, wtf is happening
HIND’S HALL. Once it’s up on streaming all proceeds to UNRWA.
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The real issue with the Poetry Foundation isn’t what they say or don’t say, who they do and do not platform, their silences or failures. It’s that their endowment is literally invested in arms manufacturing. Total divestment should be the singular demand before anything else.
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some days sobriety feels to me like living in a poem. it’s so much more than not having hangovers. being able to be there for the people I care about, to hold myself accountable for my behavior, to experience the joy & pain of my life in all its remarkable reality: precious gifts
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THE PEN WORLD VOICES FESTIVAL HAS BEEN CANCELLED. Writers have spoken: WE WILL NOT ALLOW PEN'S COMPLICITY & NORMALIZATION TO CONTINUE. We will not relent until Nossel has resigned; we will not allow this organization to deny the ongoing genocide & pervert its own mission. WE WON.
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As more writers join the call to withdraw from PEN America's abject literary prizes in protest of genocide denialism, I want to say how deeply honored and grateful I am for this act of solidarity with Palestine. As faith without works is dead, so too is poetics, written art.
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I mean this sincerely, from the bottom of my heart: fuck your normalizing, pinkwashed both-sides bullshit. Demand Suzanne Nossel’s resignation, take an actual stand and boycott the apartheid state, apologize for your genocide tourism. Otherwise, all of this is pure vapor.
This is
@PENamerica
's response to the heartfelt open letter we received from our fellow writers.
We invite them to participate in open dialogue.
We call for an immediate cease-fire.
We announce a donation to help Gazan writers in crisis.
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THIS IS MY BOOK!
R E D will be published in February by
@Birdsllc
& I am so proud & excited to share these poems with the world. Pre-order info will be available next week! Huge thanks to Zoe Norvell, who designed this gorgeous cover.
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hey
@lesbianable
also tweeted this same thing a few months ago, completely unbeknownst to me⏤instead of plugging a nonexistent soundcloud, I'll point you in the direction of her excellent gay content:
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She’s alive and flying! My new chapbook, Somewhere a seagull, a collection of very short and mostly kind of hopeful poems, is now available with
@AfterHours_Ltd
, and you can get it right here:
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Marina Tsvetaeva (oh, God was having a good day when She made you!), tr. by
@ilya_poet
and Jean Valentine
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I carry this poorly laminated
@marykarrlit
poem wherever I go and today it fell out of my wallet at the nadir of a moment of desperation—the most obvious crap, like a hand gripping me firmly on the shoulder
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Our coalition of presses, magazines, & literary organizations signing on to boycott Israel grows larger every day! Curious about PACBI, & how your institution can get involved? Check out the
@wawog_now
website for more info, or reach out to me directly!
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I’ll be periodically posting poems of Jerry’s here all week, in celebration of his jubilant, inimitable spirit and voice, starting with this, one of my favorite poems in the world:
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I won't be at AWP, but I hope there is a serious amount of disruption. Pobusiness as usual is cancelled; a genocide is happening.
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now that it’s teaching season again a friendly reminder: do not share student work on the internet
& an unfriendly reminder: do not fuck your students
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Really proud and grateful to have this piece in Poem-A-Day today (curated by Jos Charles, whose selections for June have already been incredible!)
Lying hymn-barren on the dirt floor, loopy
in the leaflight, I thought I thought well of myself.
I smoked a cigarette beneath the weeping beech
we called King Tree, dreamt
a grove grown for coffinwood.
—Chase Berggrun
@patriphobe
#PoemADay
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Please join us on Wednesday at 8 PM ET for a gathering/poem-sharing/fundraiser/call to action with some human beings I deeply adore and admire:
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This article has done something irreparable to my soul. If you are not in pain right now, as this unceasing violence goes on and on, there is something wrong with you. Let this hurt you. Feel something. And let that hurt move you to act.
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all I want for xmas is for more literary institutions to commit to the Palestinian Campaign for the Cultural and Academic Boycott of Israel
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this feeling I’ve had every day since the genocide began—things are different now, forever—it’s the same feeling that I had at the beginning of the pandemic. things are different now. they have to be. don’t stop fighting, screaming, loving each other and ourselves as we struggle.
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@meakoopa
I’m Chase, a trans woman poet who writes about vengeance, venomous femininity, alcoholism, & recovery. I erased Dracula & am ready to erase anyone else who tries to fuck with me or my kin.
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I’m going to a trans makeup class at Sephora today & I’m so fucking excited!
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so, um, a quote from R E D is on the back cover of next month's POETRY, & I'm trembling with disbelief
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Forever grateful for
@Harmony_Holiday
’s debilitatingly beautiful essay on Baldwin & refusing the impulse to reduce the writers we adore into the mere outline of a human being—“let the myth of the jovial cultural servant die at last, that he may live.”
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For example, PEN's booth is
#716
and seems like a cool and fun place for people to hang out! I won't be there, I'm just saying
I won't be at AWP, but I hope there is a serious amount of disruption. Pobusiness as usual is cancelled; a genocide is happening.
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Of course,
@PENamerica
is committed to free expression! That's why CEO Suzanne Nossel sits on the Oversight Board of Meta (FB and Insta), which definitely hasn't engaged in ANY censorship or repression of Palestinian voices in the last six months, no way!
A letter from the President of PEN America: American authors demand a second draft of PEN America, and the world in which we write.
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Normalize never asking artists and writers to participate in your thing without being upfront about payment
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Um, here's Tracy K. Smith, talking about my poem "Tyranny of the Human Face" on
@slowdownshow
??!! I'm a little unable to stand, this was a gorgeous and so generous reading of this poem.
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