The Sundress Academy for the Arts is excited to present Poetry Xfit hosted by Shlagha Borah. This generative workshop event will take place on Sunday, June 16th from 2 to 4 pm EST via Zoom. Join us at the link tiny.utk.edu/sundress with the password “safta”.
Poetry Xfit isn’t about throwing tires or heavy ropes, but the idea of confusing our muscles is the same. You will receive ideas, guidelines, and more as part of this generative workshop series in order to complete three poems in two hours. A new set of prompts will be provided after the writers have written collaboratively for thirty minutes. The goal is to create material that can be later modified and transformed into artwork rather than producing flawless final versions. The event is open to prose authors as well!
Shlagha Borah (she/her) is from Assam, India. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Salamander, Nashville Review, Florida Review, Longleaf Review, and elsewhere. She is pursuing an MFA in Poetry at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and is an Editorial Assistant at The Offing. She has received support for her work from Brooklyn Poets and Sundress Academy for the Arts. She is the co-founder of Pink Freud, a student-led collective working towards making mental health accessible in India. Instagram: @shlaghab | Twitter: @shlaghaborah
A book was my first friend, this I know even from my earliest memories. While I may not have as many physical copies as I would like, the virtual library is easier to maintain— less cleaning, that’s for sure. In my mind, I envision it like a real library with each row of shelves containing something different. The largest section by far is fantasy, closely followed by mythology, and then rounded out with fiction.
Image of Maggie Diedrich’s bookshelf and a small portion of her vinyl collection
First up in fantasy I have the staples: Tolkien, Martin, Paolini— he was the first to inspire my fascination with the genre. Each time I reread the Eragon series I long for the feeling I had when I opened the book for the very first time. Martin’s A Game of Thrones series came to my attention when I was in middle school and even though I could not check them out, the internet was an easy tool at my disposal. Tolkien was a love ever since I was a child, but even now I notice new things each time I read it and as I get older I’ve found that the book changes. In more recent years I’ve read a few other authors in the fantasy genre, but overall my reading and rereading has been dominated by Sarah J. Maas. Her standout series to me is Throne of Glass. Even though it is longer and less popular, as a reader you can really see her skills and world building grow. Aelin’s journey to reclaim her identity, while not new by any means, was especially inspiring to me as I was reading at a particularly vulnerable time.
Moving on to mythology, I have an entire physical shelf dedicated to the various books I’ve collected over the years. I started out in the place most do: fairy tales and Rick Riordan’s The Lightning Thief Series. It was inevitable that I would end up minoring in classics, but what was unexpected was the fascination I would develop in African mythology. Norse was interesting to be sure, but the creation myth of the Yoruba people just scratched my brain like it never had been before. Grimm’s Fairytales is another favorite alongside The Tasha Tudor Book of Fairytales.
A lot of the fiction I do have has been due to enrolling in courses where they require the physical books and I think myself better for having read them. Morrison, Walker, and Hurston are the dominating authors of this section. Most recently I reread The Color Purple in preparation to see the upcoming movie. I hadn’t read it in five years and it showed. Some of the themes and truths of the novel rang more true now than they had when I was eighteen. I am positive the same will happen each time I read it. Their Eyes Were Watching God was a relatively recent read for me, but one I enjoyed no less. To talk about Morrison’s excellence would take far longer time than I have available, but in one word: extraordinary. An honorable mention is Nella Larsen’s Passing as I enjoy the ambiguous (but unambiguous) ending.
A trend that I have noticed as I have grown older is the tendency to gravitate toward female authors. For one reason or another it feels more familiar when I read words written by a woman. I have a lot of life to live, but I know that a massive part of how I will handle the challenges comes from the books I have been lucky enough to read.
Maggie Diedrich is a senior at the University of Tennessee Knoxville and will graduate with her Bachelor’s in English Rhetoric and Writing. She is a contributor at The Daily Beacon and enjoys tattoos, reading, and music.
I read the poems in Subhaga Crystal Bacon’s Transitory (BOA Editions 2023) with a heavy heart following the events of the past few weeks. On April 25th 2024, I watched police in riot gear storm my college’s encampment and brutalize my classmates, peers, and friends, specifically targeting black and brown students, as we peacefully protested the genocide in Gaza. This poetry collection honors trans lives that were lost in 2020 to violence, and here we are four years later, with violence and grief continuing to permeate our lives as more Palestinians are martyred every day.
Bacon uses her collection to ensure that the lives and legacies of the trans people she dedicates her poetry to—the ones that were murdered because their mere existence has turned into a political issue for people to debate—aren’t reduced to a statistic. Through her elegies, she humanizes trans lives lost to violence, reminding the reader that they had lives outside of their deaths. Bacon begins the collection with “Cautiously Watching for Violence,” a poem where the speaker opens up about their own experience with transphobia, homophobia, and misogyny. The poem begins with the speaker recounting a violent threat they received from a man over the phone: “I’m going to come where you live / and rape you and kill you” (13). Although I don’t know if Bacon is speaking from her own experience or the experience of another trans person, I nevertheless commend her for writing so unapologetically about the violent transphobia that runs rampant in our society.
This collection is full of bravery. If I’ve learned anything from this collection, it’s to be steadfast in advocating for justice. Later in the same poem, the speaker recounts how even in the present day, they still are subject to transphobia and homophobia:
“Even, at sixty, walking my foofy dog across the street
in the suburbs, a spring day, from the car window
he says get out of the way you ugly old dyke” (14).
Even though society is more progressive than it was years and years ago, such words are still spewing with hatred. I think some people turn a blind eye, naively, to the transphobia and homophobia that is prevalent in today’s world because they compare today to society decades ago. They choose to only look at the progress we’ve made. But just because younger generations are more progressive and politically active, just because we have slightly more trans and queer representation in media now than we did decades ago, doesn’t mean we should stop fighting.
Although every poem in this collection is poignant, one particularly moving poem is “Alexa: Neulisa Luciano Ruiz, 28, Tao Baja, Puerto Rico, February 24.” In this poem dedicated to Alexa, the speaker recounts the details of Alexa’s death and how her killers filmed her murder, posting it to social media. I can’t help but re-read the last stanza constantly:
“In the headlights’ glare, ten shots, laughter
on the video they shared on social media
because it is allowed” (18).
This image haunts me. Not only are these people ending a trans life, but they’re taking pride in it, relishing in it with laughter like it’s a celebration. From the poem “Nina Pop, 28, Sikeston, MO, May 3,” I can’t stop thinking about the line, “What happened next, only you and he know, / and neither of you is speaking” (27). Nina physically can’t speak because she’s no longer alive; she no longer has a body or a voice. The man who murdered her, on the other hand, is not speaking because he doesn’t want to own up to the atrocity he committed. When I read “John Scott/Scottlynn Kelly DeVore, 51, Augusta, GA, March 12,” I keep circling back to the line, “For Scott’s loved ones, a nightmare that’s unending” (20). Although as a reader I am greatly impacted while reading this collection, what I feel does not even compare to what the families of these trans lives lost to violence are experiencing. They have to reckon with these tragedies every single day, the loss and grief seeping into their daily life.
Although Transitory was so difficult for me to read, I am so grateful I did. I implore everyone to read this collection because it is valuable and necessary. It is so important to raise awareness and open people’s eyes to the brutal reality that trans people are forced to endure daily. I’m not religious, but I really hope every trans life that was brutally taken, I hope they’re all together in their own trans heaven together, somewhere safer than this world ever was to them. While reading this collection, I thought a lot about the chants my peers and I sang at our college’s encampment, and how they linger in my mind even weeks later. In particular, I think about the chant, “free the people, free them all,” amidst the fight for Palestinian liberation, and how it connects to Maya Angelou’s words: “The truth is, no one of us can be free until everybody is free.” Let us never stop advocating for the liberation of all people, for trans and queer people, for people of color, for Indigenous People, and for the liberation of Palestine, Congo, Sudan, and Haiti.
Annalisa Hansford (they/them) studies Creative Writing at Emerson College. Their poetry appears or is forthcoming in The West Review, The Lumiere Review, and Heavy Feather Review. They are the co-editor-in-chief of hand picked poetry, a poetry editor for The Emerson Review and Hominum Journal, and a reader for Sundress Publications.
The Sundress Academy for the Arts is excited to present “From Selfie to Poetry: Writing the Self-Portrait Poem,” a workshop led by Amie Whittemore on Wednesday, June 12th, 2024, from 6-7:30 PM EST. This event will be held over Zoom. Participants can access the event at tiny.utk.edu/sundress (password: safta).
In this generative workshop, we will explore the self-portrait poem and what it means to explicitly make the self—as messy and resistant to definition as it is—the subject of our poems. We’ll take inspiration from visual arts as well as contemporary poetry to draft new work and expand our poetic selves.
Participants of all levels of experience are welcome.
While there is no fee to participate in this workshop, those who are able and appreciative may make donations directly to Amie Whittemore via Venmo @Amie-Whittemore or Paypal via @AmieWhittemore.
Amie Whittemore (she/her) is the author of the poetry collections Glass Harvest (Autumn House Press), Star-tent: A Triptych (Tolsun Books), and Nest of Matches (Autumn House Press, 2024). She was the 2020-2021 Poet Laureate of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. She teaches creative writing at Eastern Illinois University and directs MTSU Write, a from-home creative writing mentorship program.
As a collection, Lisa St. John’s Swallowing Stones (Kelsay Books, 2023) is meticulously organized: the first section looks inward, reflecting on the speaker’s youth with a focus on her fraught relationship with her mother that the speaker never seems to know what to make of. Her mother’s death leaves the speaker at an even deeper loss. The second section travels further outside the speaker, exploring societal ideas including feminism and environmentalism. The third and final section straddles the line, simultaneously going as far as outer space and traveling deep inside the speaker’s self. This section muses about death, the universe, and, interestingly, color. Poems like “Noise” and “There is No Color Without Light” use colors to examine the speaker’s physical environment and illuminate its relationship with the speaker. The speaker’s strong voice moves seamlessly through all sections of the collection, reflecting on her past, present, and future, especially as it relates to her husband, who lost his life to cancer.
Swallowing Stones wastes no time cutting into deep truths about the speaker’s world. The collection seems to have little energy for secrets or ambivalence. As painful as it is, the speaker views their past as an integral part of their life and thus remains in touch with it. She comes ready to talk about the death of her beloved husband. She comes ready to talk about her place as a woman in a world ready to make women statistics. She comes ready to talk about how art, space, and colors move her mind and shape her universe. In keeping with this brand of fearlessness, the poet is unafraid of abstractions. St. John makes heavy use of words such as “love,” “agony,” and “patience” that, as young poets, we are often taught to avoid. St. John clearly considers this fear of abstractions restrictive, which surprised and intrigued me about her work.
These ideas are perhaps most potent when abstractions shake hands with more concrete images. In “The Potency of Thought,” the speaker explores the machinations of her own mind, reporting, “The bones of my brain have not yet been picked clean” (St. John 13). The speaker goes on to welcome life’s pains in “Symmetry of Loss.” She insists that “Remembering means living inside a prayer” (23), and taking in the pain of the death of loved ones—rather than avoiding it—leads to flourishing growth.
The collection is full of more seemingly opposed ideas as readers move through the speaker’s journey. St. John is not only conscious of these paradoxes, she appears to revel in them: “Hatred is just the awkward side of love,” she concludes in “Dressing Mom” (6). Hardness and softness, joy and grief, life and death all join in a dance throughout the collection.
Swallowing Stones looks at trauma as a part of life, like stones at the bottom of a river. But instead of being weighed down by these stones, or trying to escape them, St. John confronts them, swallowing them whole, transforming into something new and bright. In “There Must Be a Science to This,” the speaker resolves to “find the puzzle’s missing piece and eat it in remembrance of you,” concluding “[she] was not made to be complete.” For all its musings about death, the collection overall marches in the direction of rebirth. The opening lines of the final poem, “Dear Love,” a letter to the speaker’s late husband, seem to address this most directly:
I was afraid
that when you died,
no one would call me Lily any longer.
They would recall my paper name
and I would become Lisa again, and Lily would die, too.
But I am both
still
here. (St. John 73)
St. John’s earnest, consistent reflections on the self urge us to look inward. Her poems at once feel like a thousand blooming flowers and a thousand solemn prayers. May we keep Swallowing Stones’s audacious approach to our personal growth as we find our own stones to swallow.
Whitney Cooper holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Eastern Kentucky University, where they served as editor-in-chief of Jelly Bucket, the graduate literary journal run by the university. They also work as a reader for Atlanta Review. A clerical error was made while earning their bachelor’s degree, and they have been passionate about poetry ever since. Their poetry appears in Glassworks Magazine, Stillpoint Literary Magazine, Calliope, Right Hand Pointing, and SHARK REEF. They live in metro Atlanta with their wife, cat, and miniature schnauzer mix.
Only one book on this shelf is one that I purchased for myself. Every other book was a gift. Were some gifts better than others? Absolutely! I would much rather read one of my James Patterson books again before I touch How to Survive a Freakin Bear Attack. But hey… here we are.
People read for two reasons: one, because they think they will actually enjoy it, and two, because someone told them to. I can proudly say that I am a prodigy of the latter option. I used to hate reading! Someone would have to pay me to pick up a book. Now, it is one of the most rewarding things in my life.
The books seen above fall into one of three categories:
Books suggested for me through sports
Books given to me for personal growth
How to Survive a Freakin Bear Attack
My background consists of countless days spent in a locker room. It was sweaty and gross, but it was home. Back then, I was young, and I was ignorant, thinking my only purpose was to be a human machine. But my coaches knew there was more. They knew we needed to grow as people to grow as players. To do that, they challenged us to read. The first book was Watership Down which might’ve been a little too much for a 14-year-old, but The Energy Bus by Jon Gordon changed my life. I can almost guarantee that unless you were an athlete at some point in time, there is almost zero chance that you have read this book. I won’t spoil anything because I strongly urge everyone to read this it, but if you don’t, just know that you are an energy vampire.
Did you know you can take your bus anywhere you want to go? Say yes three times with me. Yes, yes, yes. You can take it to the movies, the beach or the North Pole. Just say where you want to go and believe that it will be so. Because every journey and ride begins with a desire to go somewhere and do something and if you have a desire then you also have the power to make it happen.
Jon Gordon, The Energy Bus: 10 Rules to Fuel Your Life, Work, and Team with Positive Energy
Personal growth can mean a number of things. It can mean to learn something or gain some peace of mind. The one book that I purchased is a combination of the two. A Daring Faith in A Cowardly World by Ken Harrison. This book was purchased for my mission trip to Alaska. It was the first mission trip I had ever been on and needless to say, I was terrified. I didn’t know what I was getting myself into and I felt in no way prepared. How was I supposed to introduce my faith to others when I was still new to it myself? So, to calm my worries and to hopefully grow, I read. This book taught me so much about the importance of simplicity in one’s life. It also forced me to slow down and breathe. After finishing the book, I felt like everything was going to be okay, and it was! It turned out to be the best experience of my life.
The final category is simple: books with a deeper meaning than just a title. How to Survive a Freakin Bear Attack means so much more to me than actual survival skills. It was a gift that showed that someone was listening to what I was saying. As one can infer, I was talking about how I would survive a bear attack, so the gift was pretty spot on!
Stay Sexy & Don’t Get Murdered is the best example I have. On a trip my dad and I took together, we were looking at the books in the airport when we came across this title.
Since then, every time my dad and I sign off over text, we end it with, “I love you! Stay sexy, and don’t get murdered!”
I have never read this book and probably never will, but it is something that I will keep with me forever as a reminder of how much fun you can have with the little things.
Every book does not have to serve the same purpose and every book doesn’t have to stay on a shelf forever. My favorite books to read are not seen above because they have been given away to live on a new shelf for a while. Will they ever return back to my shelf? Probably not. But that doesn’t mean that what they gave me was any less valuable. A good book can be one that is worn, teared, maybe has some sand left in it. But it can also be one that is treasured, never touched, and serves as a reminder in your life about what led you to this point.
ErinCantrell is a rising senior at the University of Tennessee where she is studying Creative Writing with hopes to attend law school. She loves poetry, pickleball, and bad TV sitcoms. In her free time, you can find her on the volleyball court where she is coaching young girls with dreams bigger than their pigtails.
I go to boarding school and live in a very small single, which means I do not have as much storage for the books I love—most of my reads I’ve left at home. However, I brought books onto campus with me based on a few factors: my reading interest, how long they’ve been rotting on my bookshelf, and lastly, how much they weigh (when you have two 50-pound suitcases to carry your entire life across the country, things get a little difficult). Most of these books are also for class (unfortunately, I do not find myself casually interpreting the Bible). Moreover, I find my dorm room to be a collection of myself, and I wanted this corner to show personality and mementos of things I cared a lot about, so there’s also a lot of art!
Because I was applying to colleges last fall, I had a lot of school visits where I traveled throughout the east coast. As a result, I accumulated more than enough gifted merch from the admissions office I didn’t know where to put. Thus, there’s a few flags on the wall. I also may or may not have taken a poster copy of the Wesleyan Film Series calendar when I went, since film is also one of my main interests. The Palestinian flag is from a rally I went to in New Haven in December, and the two prints are gifts from friends for my birthday last May. Lastly, there’s a flyer from the Yale University Art Gallery (YUAG) to work as a gallery guide! The YUAG is one of my favorite places, so I forked off the poster from a current freshman friend and hung it up as well—I hope to work there next fall!
Proportionally, almost a third of the books here are poetry books. I have works from Mary Oliver, Ada Limón, Richard Siken, Noor Hindi, José Olivarez, and my own chapbook. When I attended Miami Book Fair this past November, I also got to meet some of the lovely people at Europa Press and purchased not one, not two, but three of Mieko Kawakami’s works. These are featured on the shelf as well as prose books like Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground. Lastly, I have some books for class, such as Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, The Aeneid, The Oxford Annotated Bible, and One Hundred Years of Solitude.
I also possess an incredible array of journals, ranging from my scrapbook to my writing journal I recently retired, to the diary I need to write in more consistently on my desk. Whether written in or not, most of these journals also find their way onto my shelf with my other items: my two tarot and oracle decks I chose out of my collection at home, a turtle an ex gave me, and some tea my father bought for me in junior year.
This shelf has become an extension of me—my beings, my passions, and my memories. I hope sharing it with you extended that feeling of warmth and self even further.
Saturn Browne (she/they) is a Chinese-Vietnamese immigrant and the Connecticut Youth Poet Laureate, East Coast Asian American Student Union (ECAASU) Artist-in-Residence, and the author of BLOODPATHS. Her work has been recognized by Gone Lawn, GASHER, Beaver Mag, The Pulitzer Center, Foyle Young Poets, and others. She is an incoming student at Yale University.
River City Fires (Driftwood Press, 2023) by Derek Annis is a succinct voice on the power of humanity and nature. With 23 poems, the chapbook presents themes of migration, memory, religion, and relationships through a mythical story-telling format, which manifests through Annis’ use of lineation and imagery.
The poems illustrate Annis’ upbringing in Spokane Falls, Washington and his different perspectives on the world as he matures. The opening poem, “Manifest,” brings the reader in with its storytelling on themes of nature. Annis writes, “it was the stick / I loved / the cave / the wolves / carried me / scared boy / one humid afternoon,” creating an atmosphere of mystery and awe for the readers (1). The ending of the poem also acts as a call or prayer, where Annis pleads, “god / make death / turn away,” giving readers a hint of themes this book will further explore (3).
The second poem of the collection contrasts with the first in both form but also usage of third person perspectives. As prose poetry, Annis writes,
“great storms of birds flew into the
fields reflected on picture windows, clapped against the
asphalt with bone-pierced throats. The people of the city
took up shovels, went back to the forest and extracted a
wealth of symbols, which they organized according to
brightness. The symbols were cold. For fear of the dark,
the city kept its eyes open at all times.” (7)
Here, they illustrate the disjuncture between the city as a body and the bodies of nature conflicting due to greed. This idea of city vs. nature comes back again in “Dysgeusia,” where Annis opens with the words, “The city’s encircled by fire. / The ants are buzzing. / I’ve acquired a rifle from the honeymaker’s son, / who’s late to the wedding” (19). Annis’ portrayal of the city as a space which is attacked, then juxtaposing it with intense images of nature (birds flying into the buildings, ants, etc.) brings forth layers of meaning for readers to ponder and explore.
A large part of River City Fires also explores different ideas of innocence & memory. They start the third poem, “Skin,” writing, “I was a boy with curly / brown hair. I had / all my skin. I wore it / under the stars / like a white dress,” showing the naive state of Annis in his childhood (8). Later on in the chapbook, Annis also solidifies this sense of childhood in the poem, “Potato Salad,” where he writes, “Growing up, the best part of summer / was the family picnic / in the public park” (10). He reminisces on his past of family and community, a deep contrast to the pessimistic view which Annis portrays later on in the chapbook. One example of this pessimism can be seen in “Lullaby,” where Annis writes,
“I was smoking
in the attic. You entered and untied my face.
Downstairs, our children
cried in cradles
of ice.” (33)
The poet confronts the harsh realities of adulthood, using the juxtaposition of innocence and disillusionment to underscore the complexity of human experience, inviting readers to contemplate the fragility of memory and the inevitability of loss.
The last poem of the collection, “Agency,” uses mythological storytelling devices to finish off the collection. With lines such as “In the gray flesh of / the sky, a gash opens. The blue children slip into it, calling, / we’re flying, mother. We’re on our way to the sea,” Annis plays with lyricism to give the readers a combination of memory, hope. family, and nature, inviting readers to immerse themselves in a world where beauty and darkness coexist (34). Through his poignant verse and vivid imagery, Annis crafts a chapbook that resonates long after the final poem has been read, leaving an indelible mark on the reader’s psyche.
Saturn Browne (she/they) is a Chinese-Vietnamese immigrant and the Connecticut Youth Poet Laureate, East Coast Asian American Student Union (ECAASU) Artist in Residence, and the author of BLOODPATHS. Her work has been recognized by Gone Lawn, GASHER, Beaver Mag, Pulitzer Center, Foyle Young Poets, and others. She is an incoming undergraduate student at Yale University.
Knoxville, TN — The Sundress Academy for the Arts is excited to present Poetry Xfit hosted by Marah Hoffman. This generative workshop event will take place on Sunday, May 19th from 2 to 4 pm EST via Zoom. Join us at the link tiny.utk.edu/sundress with the password “safta”.
Poetry Xfit isn’t about throwing tires or heavy ropes, but the idea of confusing our muscles is the same. You will receive ideas, guidelines, and more as part of this generative workshop series in order to complete three poems in two hours. A new set of prompts will be provided after the writers have written collaboratively for thirty minutes. The goal is to create material that can be later modified and transformed into artwork rather than producing flawless final versions. The event is open to prose authors as well!
Marah Hoffman is a poetry and creative nonfiction writer from Reading, Pennsylvania. She is an MFA candidate, graduate teaching assistant, and Ecotone reader at University of North Carolina Wilmington. In the fall of 2022, she was the long-term writer-in-residence at Sundress Academy for the Arts (SAFTA). Hoffman continues to support SAFTA as Creative Director.
Each month we split donations with our community partner. Our community partner for May is SEEED. SEEED, Socially Equal Energy Efficient Development, is a registered 501(c)3 located in the heart of East Knoxville. SEEED was founded in 2009 as a response to growing community concerns about gun violence, lack of youth opportunities, and unaffordable utility and housing burdens. SEEED seeks to provide pathways out of poverty for young adults through career readiness training, environmental education and community engagement. To learn more, visit here!
The Sundress Academy for the Arts is pleased to announce the guests for the May installment of our reading series, poets Valerie A. Smith and Anthony DiPietro. Join us on Thursday, May 16th at Pretentious Beer Co. from 7:00-9:00 PM for a reading followed by an open mic hosted by Shlagha Borah. Sign-up for the open mic begins at 7 PM sharp and is limited to 10-12 readers.
Valerie A. Smith has a PhD in Poetry from Georgia State University and an MA in Professional Writing from Kennesaw State University where she is a Lecturer of English. A 2022 Sewanee Writers Conference Scholar and Hambidge Center Fellow, her poems appear in The South Carolina Review, Aunt Chloe, Weber—The Contemporary West, Spectrum, Obsidian, Crosswinds, Dogwood, Solstice, Oyster River Pages, Wayne Literary Review, and elsewhere. Find her online at www.valeriesmithwriter.com.
Anthony DiPietro is a gay sex poet and arts administrator originally from Providence, RI. He has lived throughout New England and in California, New York, Oregon, and Tennessee. A graduate of Brown University with honors in creative writing, he earned a creative writing MFA at Stony Brook University. Now deputy director of Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, he resides in Worcester, Massachusetts. He composed his 2021 chapbook And Walk Through (Seven Kitchens Press) on a typewriter during the pandemic lockdowns. kiss & release (Unsolicited Press, 2024) is his debut collection. His writing and readings are featured on his website, www.AnthonyWriter.com
Our community partner for May is FACK (First Aid Collective Knoxville)! FACK is a radical mutual aid collective bringing resources and support to our city’s underserved. Resisting the scarcity and isolation imposed by capitalism through sustained community care, harm reduction, and direct action. Recently, the First Aid Collective in Knoxville has been working with students at the University of Tennessee who are protesting the war in Palestine and calling on the administration to divest. Donations will help with supplies and other mutual aid efforts.
