The Sundress Academy for the Arts is pleased to announce the guests for the March installment of our reading series. This event will take place on Sunday, April 30th at Pretentious Beer Co. from 1:00-3:00PM.
Kimberly Ann Southwick (she/her/hers) is the founder & editor in chief of the literary-arts journal Gigantic Sequins, which has been in print since 2009. Her debut full-length poetry collection, Orchid Alpha is forthcoming from Trembling Pillow Press this year. She is an Assistant Professor specializing in Poetry and Creative Writing at Jacksonville State University. Currently, she lives and writes in Saks, Alabama, with her daughter, Esmé, and their dog Nova.
Sam Herschel Wein (he/they) is a lollygagging plum of a poet who specializes in perpetual frolicking. A 2022 Pushcart Prize winner, their third chapbook, Butt Stuff Flower Bush, is forthcoming from Porkbelly Press. He co-founded and edits Underblong and is poetry co-editor for Grist Journal. They have work forthcoming in American Poetry Review, The Cincinnati Review, and Diode Editions, among others.
Miriam Kirk is an up and coming stand-up comedian hailing from Nashville, TN. Her quick witted observational style and dynamic stage presence captivate young and old audiences alike. She was recently voted Third Coast Comedy Club’s Comedian of the Year. Home to regional and national talents such as Laura Peek, Brad Sative, Allison Summers, and SNL’s KC Shornima. When Miriam isn’t on stage you can find her losing out on Nike’s sneaker app, winning connect four or really any board-game against her nieces and nephew or taking a nap.
Jorden Albright is a Knoxville, TN-based singer and producer boasting a musical style affectionately described as “bisexual bedroom pop.” While her discography of dreamy synth melodies and ambient vocals largely falls under the electropop umbrella, it features a fusion of genres including house, hip-hop, and indie rock.
This month our community partner for April is the Appalachian Community Fund (ACF). ACF funds and encourages grassroots social change in Central Appalachia. We work to build a sustainable base of resources in order to support community-led organizations seeking to overcome and address issues of race, economic status, gender, sexual identity, disability, and the environment. As a community-controlled fund, ACF aims to expand and strengthen movements for social change—to change systems and institutions—by leveraging our collective power. Find out more about the work ACF does here!
This event is brought to you in part by a grant provided by the Tennessee Arts Commission. Find out about the important work they do here.
The Sundress Academy for the Arts is excited to present “Cognitive Dissonance Unlocked: Persona Poems that Give More than Poetry,” a workshop led by Denise R. Ervin on April 12, 2023, from 6-7:30 PM. This event will be held over Zoom. Participants can access the event at tiny.utk.edu/sundress (password: safta).
A common trend when reading poetry is to conflate the poet with the speaker. The easiest way to unlock the cognitive dissonance of hearing a voice that does not match the person it comes from is to view performances of persona poems from established artists who are masters at the task. Some of these literary greats include Airea Dee Matthews and Patricia Smith. In this 90-minute workshop, we will watch performances and discuss not only the feelings evoked by the poems but how the words and images presented conjure ideals for us that do not match the performer of the words.
Denise R. Ervin is a creative writer hewn from the streets, classrooms, and boardrooms of Detroit, all of which taught her to contribute to the narrative of those who live, love, and look like her. She has spent two decades as a teaching artist, performing poetry around the country, and leading workshops for the likes of Midnight & Indigo and Room Project. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in AADUNA, Harbinger Asylum, Third Wednesday Magazine, and others. Most recently, she was selected as a Writing Fellow by The Watering Hole and a semifinalist for America’s Next Great Author.
While there is no fee to participate in this workshop, those who are able and appreciative may make donations directly to Denise Ervin via Paypal: denise.ervin@hotmail.com; Cash App $deniserervin
This workshop is brought to you in part by a grant provided by the Tennessee Arts Commission. Find out about the important work they do here.
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, April 16 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 has a bachelor’s in English and Creative Writing from Lebanon Valley College. There, she served as co-poetry editor of Green Blotter Literary Magazine and Sigma Tau Delta English Honors Society president. From the LVC English department, she won The Green Blotter Writer Award. She has been featured in journals including Green Blotter, LURe Journal, Oakland Arts Review, Beyond Thought, and Asterism. Now, she supports Sundress Academy for the Arts through her role as Creative Director. Marah loves creative nonfiction, intertextuality, whimsicality, cats, lattes, distance running, and adding to her personal lexicon. Her list of favorite words grows every week.
Thank you to the Tennessee Arts Commission for making this event possible. Find out more about the important work that they do here.
While this is a free event, donations can be made to the Sundress Academy for the Arts here.
Each month we split any Xfit donations with our community partner. This month our community partner for April is the Appalachian Community Fund (ACF). ACF funds and encourages grassroots social change in Central Appalachia. We work to build a sustainable base of resources in order to support community-led organizations seeking to overcome and address issues of race, economic status, gender, sexual identity, disability, and the environment. As a community-controlled fund, ACF aims to expand and strengthen movements for social change—to change systems and institutions—by leveraging our collective power. Appalachian Community Fund is bold, forward-thinking, inclusive—a champion of the people of Appalachia.
By lifting up the voices of our community, supporting our community’s vision for change, and advancing local leadership, Appalachian Community Fund (ACF) embodies the power of collective action and bottom-up transformation. Inclusivity is paramount to our definition of community, and this value is lived out in our efforts to give many different voices a platform. To everyone at ACF, “y’all means all” is much more than a fun catchphrase. ACF’s commitment to effective, people-driven progress is bolstered by our firm Appalachian roots. Beyond honoring Appalachian culture and heritage, our approach to change-making fundamentally reflects the spirit of Appalachia: gritty and resourceful with a well-developed instinct for problem-solving. At the heart of the fund is a staunch belief in the sharing of resources, energy, time, and ideas with each other to achieve a common vision for change and to shift the narrative about Appalachia. Find out more about the work ACF does here!
This selection, chosen by guest editor JJ Rowan, is from about:blank by Tracy Fuad, released by University of Pittsburgh Press in 2022.
Terms of Syllogism
I was sure that being in between meant being nowhere.
Certain there were scissors that could cut me off the grid.
I hoped there was a key, but was sure the void was serious,
virulent and spreading. I was sure alone, most of the time.
And surely, right on some accounts, a logic that left me
pounding. Was intimacy, by nature, grotesque?
Those intimate with me were divided. Where was I,
young and running with my mother in a drenching rain?
Sometimes all that's left of what I've lived is cinema, kinetic
and anonymous, like it could have been anyone's memory.
The ambulance carrying my father at three in the morning struck
and killed a black bear. The beast wore death's fur in my father's place,
had to be hauled off the ribbon of road before the vehicle
could pass. I know there is a door in the exact shape of my body.
That when I go through, I will know by how acutely it licks
my perimeter. On the phone, my mother tells me,
island. That is where I'll go when I'm gone. Be certain,
I tell myself, to be ready for the door when it opens.
Tracy Fuad is a 2023 NEA Fellow and the author of about:blank, winner of the 2020 Donald Hall Prize. Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in The Paris Review, POETRY Magazine, The Yale Review, and she is also the author of three chapbooks: PITH, DAD DAD DAD DAD DAD DAD DAD, and Body of Water 2. She lives with her family in Berlin, where she teaches poetry at the Berlin Writers’ Workshop.
JJ Rowan (they/them) is a queer nonbinary writer and dancer. Their poems, not-poems, and interactive performances have appeared in the tiny, Dream Pop Journal, 45th Parallel, and at the SMOL Fair and the Splinter Collective’s Interrupted by Trains, among others. Their most recent chapbook is a simple verb (Bloof Books). They are on the editorial team at just femme & dandy. You can sign up for their newsletter, actual motion, at their website.
This selection, chosen by guest editor JJ Rowan, is from about:blank by Tracy Fuad, released by University of Pittsburgh Press in 2022.
Slowly, I Learned to Pronounce the Language in the Language
wen Ay kaym heer
wyth alunness
payn was thaer
yn tha pyth
the kluth
wayt untyl tumurruw
nuthyng hapend untyl 4 u’cluk
dun’t upen thys buks untyl Ay kum bak
∴
in a room
in a garden
in a photo
in the water
in the mountains
in my mouth
between winter and spring
among the chairs
on a Friday afternoon
in summer
in 2010
∴
say:
ل َي
I say to you:
يت دةل َيم
You say to me:
ئةوةم ثي بل َي
Tracy Fuad is a 2023 NEA Fellow and the author of about:blank, winner of the 2020 Donald Hall Prize. Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in The Paris Review, POETRY Magazine, The Yale Review, and she is also the author of three chapbooks: PITH, DAD DAD DAD DAD DAD DAD DAD, and Body of Water 2. She lives with her family in Berlin, where she teaches poetry at the Berlin Writers’ Workshop.
JJ Rowan (they/them) is a queer nonbinary writer and dancer. Their poems, not-poems, and interactive performances have appeared in the tiny, Dream Pop Journal, 45th Parallel, and at the SMOL Fair and the Splinter Collective’s Interrupted by Trains, among others. Their most recent chapbook is a simple verb (Bloof Books). They are on the editorial team at just femme & dandy. You can sign up for their newsletter, actual motion, at their website.
I’ve been creating for as long as I can remember. In elementary school, I wrote a skit about a ballet class solving a mystery, and I got together with several of my classmates and we were able to preform it for the school. It wasn’t very complex, as I was like seven when I wrote it. The biggest thing I remember about it was how much fun it was to write it and how happy I was that other people liked it, too. Thus, my love of writing began.
I’ve been told I have a pretty big imagination for almost my whole life. One of my most favorite things to do is to create new worlds and see what adventures can happen outside of my own reality. Playing games like Dungeons and Dragons really puts my brain to work, as I have to come up with examples of new worlds in real time. Imagination is also useful in my prose and poetry, as I very often write about things as I imagine they would happen. For example, I love writing from the perspective of people in careers I have never imagined having (such as a neurosurgeon or as an accountant).
I’ve had some really valuable mentors during my writing career. I was introduced to things like National Novel Writing Month and National Poetry Month, which offered challenges to help me to grow my portfolio. Being able to write alongside people who had been doing so for a while was a truly valuable experience and one I will treasure for the rest of my life.
Being an intern for the Sundress Academy for the Arts will be my first real world experience doing what I love. I am so excited for this opportunity, and I look forward to all of the things I will learn from the people involved. I am so thankful everyday that I have come this far, and I can’t wait to see where I can go.
Kayla Howell (she/ they) is an undergraduate student at the University of Tennessee- Knoxville studying Creative Writing with a concentration in poetry. She is a regular at the community’s open mics and loves collaborating with other writers. She enjoys hanging out with her two dogs–Lionel and Lucille–listening to podcasts while she bakes, and playing Dungeons & Dragons.
This selection, chosen by guest editor JJ Rowan, is from about:blank by Tracy Fuad, released by University of Pittsburgh Press in 2022.
Object Exercise
First you must gather the objects.
Open the polish and polish each object
until every object is coated in polish,
a thin film that takes on the shape
of the object. Then dissect every
object with a circumstantial blade.
When the object is fully dissected,
remake it, but more in your image.
Then use concise scissors to prune
the object, removing what wilts
or yellows. Turn up the object
sound. Then, dissect again. Hold
each piece to check for resistance:
if it withers, it's an object.
If it shudders, it's a subject.
Tracy Fuad is a 2023 NEA Fellow and the author of about:blank, winner of the 2020 Donald Hall Prize. Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in The Paris Review, POETRY Magazine, The Yale Review, and she is also the author of three chapbooks: PITH, DAD DAD DAD DAD DAD DAD DAD, and Body of Water 2. She lives with her family in Berlin, where she teaches poetry at the Berlin Writers’ Workshop.
JJ Rowan (they/them) is a queer nonbinary writer and dancer. Their poems, not-poems, and interactive performances have appeared in the tiny, Dream Pop Journal, 45th Parallel, and at the SMOL Fair and the Splinter Collective’s Interrupted by Trains, among others. Their most recent chapbook is a simple verb (Bloof Books). They are on the editorial team at just femme & dandy. You can sign up for their newsletter, actual motion, at their website.
This selection, chosen by guest editor JJ Rowan, is from about:blank by Tracy Fuad, released by University of Pittsburgh Press in 2022.
Future Conditional
If you have your arms crossed in two weeks.
If there is a cursor hovering over your chin.
If in a language that does not interest me.
If you have passed with two weeks.
If you have a seat on your floor.
If in a language that is not relevant to me.
If you go for two weeks.
If a sitting is on the ground.
If I have a link in a language.
If you go for two weeks.
If the sitting is on the ground.
If I have a language in a language.
Tracy Fuad is a 2023 NEA Fellow and the author of about:blank, winner of the 2020 Donald Hall Prize. Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in The Paris Review, POETRY Magazine, The Yale Review, and she is also the author of three chapbooks: PITH, DAD DAD DAD DAD DAD DAD DAD, and Body of Water 2. She lives with her family in Berlin, where she teaches poetry at the Berlin Writers’ Workshop.
JJ Rowan (they/them) is a queer nonbinary writer and dancer. Their poems, not-poems, and interactive performances have appeared in the tiny, Dream Pop Journal, 45th Parallel, and at the SMOL Fair and the Splinter Collective’s Interrupted by Trains, among others. Their most recent chapbook is a simple verb (Bloof Books). They are on the editorial team at just femme & dandy. You can sign up for their newsletter, actual motion, at their website.
The first time, when the doctor inserted / the needle, I winced—not from pain but subtraction, each / sharp click reducing me to specimen.—“Redbuds”
Ja’net Danielo’s This Body I Have Tried to Write is compiled of ten short, yet powerful poems on the author’s struggle with cancer (MAYDAY, 2022). Despite the somber tone of the collection, each poem is captivating. You can almost feel the blood dripping from the doctor’s needles, the despair and rejection from the other cancer-afflicted, and the quiet fury from Danielo herself.
When my time came, / I said to the surgeon / I’m not ready, / by which I meant / not for the blade / on the tongue, / but the knife / my body would take / to itself, for that final / moment.—“That Episode of 90210 When Brenda Finds a Lump”
As someone who hasn’t experienced cancer first-hand, it’s difficult to comprehend the suffering Danielo and others like her face. One particular area that most cancer patients deal with, and that is the most frightening to me, is agonizing over time. Indeed, time is often referenced throughout Danielo’s poems, and it is one of the many elements that drew me closer to her experiences. Danielo’s second poem, “That Episode of 90210 When Brenda Finds a Lump,” encapsulates the many moments of staring at the clock, of staring at the calendar, of staring at the skies as each passing moment brings them closer to Death’s doorstep. There were instances where the victims didn’t want to know about how much time they had left, and I was immediately reminded of my deceased grandparents who had also been plagued by this silent killer. Did they feel the same as Danielo’s victims as their cancers ate them from the inside out? Or did they ask to see the remainder of their life cord laid out on a surgical table? I may not have the answers to these questions, and they possibly didn’t either, but I do know that Danielo has offered me insight into that infectious world that has “pulled you / to it’s blood & bone ache, held / you close, [and] just would not let go.”
Today, / a Ukrainian woman told Russian soldiers to fill / their pockets with seeds, so sunflowers would grow / from their dead bodies & this is hope somehow like / paper cranes that dangle from the ceiling of the Todd / Cancer Pavilion, where bald & breastless women wait / to be called.—“Metastasis”
I appreciate that Danielo offers moments of contemporary references as well as religious symbolism to convey her feelings on cancer. Of them, my favorite is when Danielo specifically cites Judas in her fifth poem, “REDBUDS.” Throughout my journey as a reader, I’ve discovered that authors never offer up anything by accident and especially those tidbits that include flowers or plants. Thus, I found that Judas Iscariot was said to have hung himself on a redbud tree after betraying Jesus Christ, and I realized Danielo feels as betrayed by her own body as the Lord did by his disciple and as Ukrainians felt as their brothers and sisters from the neighboring land attacked their nation.
This body I have tried to write, / this betrayal, to trace its roots in my blood, / through the labyrinth of my mother’s / genome.—“This Body I Have Tried to Write,”
I can’t imagine the courage it takes to write about one’s potential impending demise, let alone sharing that vulnerability with the world, so I commend Danielo on trusting us with her pain and suffering. In fact, Danielo has given me one of my favorite things to read; not the hardships they experience, of course, but that they are willing to hand over some of the most sensitive and heart-wrenching details of themselves to complete strangers. This represents a belief and hope that others will empathize and sympathize with her, and I absolutely love it. On a parting note, and within the final poem, Danielo reveals that she wants to “write myself into memory.” Danielo can rest assured that she has, indeed, left a mark on my heart and will survive in my memory for a very long time.
Eden Stiger is a Kentucky-bred, Ohio-living college undergraduate who recently received her Bachelor of Arts in English and Creative Writing from the University of Findlay. She is the current poetry editor and layout editor for the literary magazine Slippery Elm.
Zoë Fay-Stindt’sBird Body offers readers a fresh mythology, one that is avian and ardent, through which we may better understand ourselves. There are no black and white solutions, but there is humidity, desire, breath. The poems explain that, by accepting the harm our bodies have housed, we can find the wings to evolve, if not to escape. In their responses to my questions, Fay-Stindt discloses the transformations their manuscript underwent to become Bird Body.
Marah Hoffman: The collection’s three sections–the priming, distress signal, and finally soft places to land–and their accompanying epigraphs gracefully provide context for the poems. How did you decide on these sections?
Zoë Fay-Stindt: Thank you! I’m glad they land—no pun intended. As a trauma recovery narrative, non-linearity is a really important element of Bird Body’s structure, so organizing the poems into clean, legible sections seemed really strange. That said, finding clarity through the containers that each section offered was such a relief for me! I owe that relief, actually, to the literal floorboards of Sundress’ Firefly Farms: I had all but given up on Bird Body when I came to Sundress for a writing residency, and I decided to give the chapbook one last overhaul to see if it might be salvaged. Spreading the collection’s pages out on the floor let me step into the mess of the project for the first time in several years, and from that chaos, these three sections gathered themselves up. These are the magic moments of writing: when it feels like the work is more in charge of itself than you are and you just have to step back to let it do its thing.
MH: Specifically in the section the priming, the poems pulse with wanting and the shame that follows. In “the last summer of innocence” are the lines, “I the shameful/leader of our trespasses, horrified/at my appetite, blooming predator” (15). And in “pap smear,” “my consumption/far beyond the suggested amount” (17). As the collection progresses, consumption continues to be a theme. How can birds help us understand our desires?
ZFS: Mmm, that’s an interesting question. It makes sense that want, shame, and consumption show up a lot. Writing this chapbook, I was trying to wrestle with the lessons that the body—especially an AFAB body coming into sexuality, desire, queerness, and hunger—gets taught about its worth as a sexual object. This first section, the priming, tried to hold these ideas of shame and desire up to the light without offering any clear answers. The poems in here speak to the real messy process of trying to make sense of that “priming,” and the language of shame that I microdosed all through adolescence.
ZFS: To answer your question about the birds, I’m actually not sure I know how they can help us understand our desires! But in Bird Body, at least, they helped me find a surrealist escape that wasn’t anchored in dichotomies of good/bad or right/wrong. Moving beyond the human world, I could let go of the shame I had inherited around my body, my desire, and the violence I had experienced.
MH: There is a tone of reclamation that sparks in distress signal. The speaker proclaims, “In my mythology…” (24). Overall, the poems express invention: symbols metamorphose, archetypes take flight. I say all this to bring me to my question, what was your research process like? It’s clear that amidst your experimentation is an awareness of the Bible, fables, and mythology.
ZFS: The speaker in these poems—and the younger version of me—was really hungry for a mythology that could step outside of the virgin-whore complex and greet their body as the beautiful, confusing animal that it was. My research process wasn’t very structured for this project, actually, but I did tuck into a lot of varying mythology to think about how birds have been represented in religious texts across the centuries, and birds often appeared as creators—or at least present during the creation of life. If birds were our guides or creators rather than a man-like figure, what kind of possibilities could that offer to envisioning a world beyond violent legacies?
MH: Were your poems inspired by any particular landscapes and/or seasons? I noticed a few pieces describe settings that are warm and wet–traditional descriptors of fertile places, despite the collection’s complicated relationship with maternity. To add a second question, would you like to speak to this juxtaposition?
ZFS: Oh, yeah. I was raised humid: growing up in North Carolina swamp country, the world around me was a rich and thick place. I still feel most alive when I’m in sweat-wet places—so much living goes on there! I love that humidity seeped through the poems so much.
MH: I am a huge fan of the second person, and I noticed you are too! “You” has many different owners throughout the collection: birds, a lover, the speaker’s mother, the speaker themself. What were your goals for point of view (and pronouns) as you wrote Bird Body?
ZFS: I think I’d be lying if I said I had any explicit goals for this, but thank you for the generosity of your question! Thinking about it retroactively, second person often takes hold in my poetry as a response to an always-shifting sense of distance between myself and the “outside” world. The boundaries around me feel forever in flux, and second person allows me to simultaneously hold the world at arm’s length (with boundaries, even as they fluctuate) while still stepping into deep intimacy. Beyond the page, that feels true to my experience of the world: I’m always in direct address. Always in conversation with you—you, Marah, or you, heron, or you, Mom, or you, cypress. These beings crowd my sense of self—delightfully, strangely—and the second person lets all those creatures in. I love how even that phrase, the second person, acknowledges a presence. A doubling. That feels true.
MH: While acknowledging the aches and ruptures, Bird Body spotlights awe. The personification of good’s malleability seems to be the heron, this otherworldly creature that can both swallow baby birds and bless a horizon. Would you mind explaining why herons are significant to you? What do they have to say about the notion of ‘good’?
ZFS: Hmm, that’s a really interesting question. I think, as I mentioned before, that a lot of my process of writing Bird Body was trying to figure out what the hell “good” meant in this world. Also, what does that even mean? The heron in Bird Body often appears as a complicated figure—a healer, a companion, but also, as you point out, a creature who hunts, who hungers. This felt important to me to sit with, and to, once again, step into a reality that’s almost never as black and white as we’d like to imagine.
MH: Lastly, a question I always love to ask is, what was your revision process like? Any advice to other writers who are compiling a poetry manuscript?
ZFS: Whew! Yes. An important question with an always-messy answer. As I mentioned earlier on, my revision process usually involves a lot of printed versions of the collection to make sense of the work as an embodied, separate being. Who are these poems, and what are the conversations they’re having? Spread out on the floor, I can get a real sense of them. I also like to take myself to a café and sit down with my manuscript-in-process to meet her again: who is she? What is she doing? What’s she been up to while I was sleeping, eating, taking a bath? After gathering a draft of my manuscript together and putting it down for a while, I like to come back to the work, read through it as a whole, and write down my general sense of what the collection is working towards and what questions it’s raising. I’m almost always surprised. I think that’d be my general advice: leave your manuscript alone for a while. Go for a several months-long walk. Then let yourself listen to what the work is telling you beyond what you thought you wanted the work to say, and see how you can honor that.
Zoë Fay-Stindt is a queer, bicontinental poet with roots in both the French and American South. Their work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, featured or forthcoming in places such as Southern Humanities, Ninth Letter, and PoetLore, and gathered into a chapbook, Bird Body, winner of Cordella Press’ inaugural Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Prize. She lives in Ames, Iowa, where she is an MFA candidate at Iowa State University, poetry editor for the environmental journal, Flyway, and a community farm volunteer. You can learn more at www.zoefaystindt.com.
Marah Hoffman has a bachelor’s in English and Creative Writing from Lebanon Valley College. In college, she served as co-poetry editor of Green Blotter Literary Magazine and Sigma Tau Delta English Honors Society president. From the LVC English department, she won The Green Blotter Writer Award. She has been featured in journals including Green Blotter, LURe Journal, Oakland Arts Review, Beyond Thought, and Asterism. Now, she supports Sundress Academy for the Arts through her role as Creative Director. Marah loves creative nonfiction, intertextuality, whimsicality, cats, lattes, distance running, and adding to her personal lexicon. Her list of favorite words grows every week.
