2023 in Review: A Longer Haul
a very very very long introspective review of my 2023 in poetry/life
CEASEFIRE NOW.
END THE GENOCIDES.
END THE OCCUPATIONS.
FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA PALESTINE WILL BE FREE.
LAND BACK.
LIBERATION NOW.
There is nothing more important to be said than that. 2023 is a year marked by mass death: the acceleration of deaths by COVID19 and its various variants that are multiplying and propagating, the acceleration of deaths by gun violence that the government has decided is the cost they will always be willing to front for the military industrial complex, and the acceleration of deaths by state-sponsored genocides in many places all at once, particularly Palestine, Sudan, Congo, and Tigray in Ethiopia. This says nothing of concentration camps that exist in nearly every continent, including and especially North America in the United States of America (detention centers, prisons, and increasingly, shantytowns composed of homeless populations and immigrants). This says nothing of the exponential violence of capitalism, etc etc etc. There is much work to do, there is blood to clean, there are bodies to bury, there are lives to grief and mourn, there are lives still dying to live and we must do all we can to make that possible.
On a personal/individual level, 2023 was a strong year. I released new projects, performed a lot, read a lot, taught poetry workshops, made music, traveled to conferences and residencies, judged poetry contests, met so many new people, and invested in many friendships. But I begin the year in exhaustion, in uncertainty, in concern– in many ways & forms. I begin with a plea to all of us to fight against the systems we are entangled in and do all that we can to end mass killing. I know it seems futile in the face of everything that has happened, but our actions have ripple effects and our impact is far larger than we can imagine. I know this because of poetry. I know this because I have seen how my little poems have moved across the world. If my poems can move, so can we, and we must.
General Note to Readers
Y’all, look at how long this is. Would you believe I’ve made cuts, too? I’ve been writing this thing since mid December and I knew I would end up publishing it in 2024 but yeesh! ~Poet Time~
So if you’re reading, thank you and strap in for a long read. If you are listening, thank you and get ready for a nice long little podcast.
I just wanted to say thank you thank you thank you to the folks who have been reading and keeping up. I find this newsletter a great way to get my work and words out there in a way that feels healthy for me. It holds me to account and it has rekindled my relationship with prose. It helps me remember that writing is something I enjoy, something I can use and share with people, and not something that has to hold me in duress or in abuse. My writing doesn’t have to be correct or noteworthy or publishable, whatever those mean, it just has to be and I can give myself permission.
Also, allow me to say this as well to preempt any possible negativity: too long? OH WELL, DON’T READ. don’t like? OH WELL, UNSUBSCRIBE. Hating? KEEP HATING.
Ehem, thank you :)
So here are the little subtitles:
CEASEFIRE NOW.
GENERAL NOTE TO READERS
GENOCIDE / INSTITUTIONAL DISILLUSIONMENT
HEALTH REVIEW
RELATIONSHIPS
POETRY PROJECTS
ELECTRIC NOBODY
BODYELECTRONIC AUDIOBOOK
MISEDUCATION
AERIAL VECTORS
RESIDENCIES
WORKSHOPS/TEACHING
PRIZES AND HONORABLE MENTIONS
PUBLICATIONS OF 2022 (Poems and Media Features)
PERFORMANCES
STATS AND SUPERLATIVES
END OF NEWSLETTER TOWARD 2024
Let’s get started.
GENOCIDE / INSTITUTIONAL DISILLUSIONMENT
What’s to say in review, really? Worse worsens. Worst reaches toward further superlative. Within the flux of the worst, the best is [re]defined, and thus, best is meaningless. The best best is merely the least harm.
Everyday in Gaza (and in West Bank, in Lebanon, in Egypt, in Yemen, in Sudan, in Congo, in Ethiopia, in Ukraine, in Haiti, in Puerto Rico, in Venezuela, in Guyana, etc etc etc…) is worse than the previous. More people die– from bombs, from snipers, from tanks, from wounds, from thirst, from famine, from disease from cold. More lies are swallowed. Normalcy attempts to take reign among all the murder. Every new normal is even more horrible than the last.
Capitalism is corrosive– we were fed the half truth that capitalism inspires innovation without the other half that the innovation gets swallowed into repetitive capital. This produces more exaggerated superlatives beyond what was previously thought possible: The richer become richer, the richest ever. The poor become poorer, the poorest ever, if only because the wealth gap is a gaping fault, if only because what was previously believed to be the worst, in fact, continuously worsened & continues to worsen.
As a poet it has been especially disheartening watching people respond to this moment, these past few months now. I see all the awards for various things (here I’m thinking National Book Awards and not even the awards season we are currently in, but it’s really all the same) and I can’t help but think of the Hunger Games and how extravagantly the people in the capitol were dressed. It’s a reminder that we live here, in the USA, in the belly of the beast.
I just find myself bitter. In these times, it’s hard not to think of the constant rejections of my explicitly political work as a form of censorship. Really that’s the whole point of my poems: the politics, but despite the long history of poetry and politics, there are so many convinced that poetry is apolitical or nonpolitical. I truly feel that because my poems are the way they are, I will be censored in life and, if I’m lucky, any accolades will come when I’m dead and the politics are more “safe”.
In looking at how many poetry organizations that have revealed themselves to be aligned only to capital and self-serving even if it means aligning with forces that support and perpetuate genocide, I find my own boundaries high in extending partnerships without knowing political allegiances and money flows. And the thing is, it isn’t just organizations, it is individuals making decisions to align with warmongers. It is so easy to virtue signal and then have hypocritical politics, and it is so easy never to address it all. 2023 was a year I watched so many people make uncouth alliances for personal gain, myself included.
I don’t feel like I can just “quit”– this is my passion. But I also don’t think I can keep trying to jam a circle into a square in attempting to make this poetry career work. I dunno, honestly, 2024 I just want to create a new slate. I’ve lost interest in the usual treaded paths. I’ve lost interest in [elite] publishing. I’ve lost interest in maintaining a regular writing practice (at least, not with all this work I am currently sitting on). I’ve lost interest in vying for the attention of institutions, and I’ve also lost interest in working with many institutions. I’ve lost interest in the social media manipulation game for social capital. I’ve lost interest in wishing certain people would notice me, especially doing so at the expense of people who support me. I’ve lost interest in holding spaces on behalf of other institutions and not ones I have any meaningful agency in. I know I still desire to create and express, but I am having to figure out new sustainable ways to do this. So now I’m only interested in holding myself to account and carefully building with highly trusted kinfolk I know I can partner with.
Still, I find that my pessimism outlines and pushes the boundaries of my optimism. I think about how many independence movements began on Jan 1, namely the genesis of the Haitian Revolution. I think about how, despite the massive destruction of the Gaza Strip, Israel has still been unable to effectively fight off guerilla fighters. That the Houthi in Yemen have been disrupting shipping routes without killing people, that protests around the world continue to jam up the gears of oppression in so many ways. It hasn’t been enough to end the violence, it hasn’t been enough to give us cause for celebration, but these are still remarkable acts in the face of such brutality.
While I have witnessed people perpetuate foul politics, I have also witnessed beautiful people attempt to rectify wrongs, bring people together, find solutions and resources for folks in need.
And, frankly, selfishly, I have even more faith in myself than ever. While I have lots of critiques to wage against myself and lots of things to improve on, I also realize that my family has relied on me a lot this year and I was able to successfully provide that support. I also remain amazed by the poetry, all the new places that the poetry pushes me to take it to. The audio and the music keeps me going, keeps me moving. I think about how journeyman musician Aerik of 10 years ago and 5 years ago would respond to current me– how amazed they would be even if they also had their critiques and improvements.
It is with that attitude and spirit that I approach 2024: with much disillusionment, with much disappointment, with much uncertainty, but also with a particular kind of hope I keep heated, with a wonder, with a closeness to my loved ones, with music.
Health Review
It is only by chance, only by luck that I did not get COVID this year. 2023 was a year I took unnecessary risks, and I would like to not place myself in as much risk in 2024.
All of my trips were risky. AWP was risky as were each of my residencies. While I mostly masked for AWP, there were definitely occasions where I did not. In my trip to New York at the Omega Institute with the Chrysalis Institute cohorts, there was a COVID outbreak that ended one of the campus workshops early, but they neglected to inform the other workshops/residents. None of our group got sick, but still! I am grateful for Sundress and Erin in Knoxville, TN for being really diligent about folks testing before the residency and masking indoors. Also grateful that my friends I visited in ATL were super COVID cautious and so we wore masks everywhere we went. And Slamming Bricks in Grand Junction did indeed have mic condoms once again, the only event I’ve seen where these were used.
But I was more reckless than ever this year. I went to two concerts this year, my first since 2019, and while I masked, I had to be among the 5-10% of people masking in those spaces. There were events I went to where I convinced myself it was okay to join everyone else unmasked. There were opportunities where I could have expressed agency over the space and made masking a high priority…but I didn’t.
My hard rules: always have a mask on hand, always wear a mask in transit. What should have been included in this hard rule is that I should always mask indoors, and really, always mask around others. But anytime food and drink were near, I didn’t mask (thinking, what’s the point of putting it on and off [knowing damn well the answer is to reduce viral load!!]). I don’t mask while performing and I don’t mask while teaching because people find it important to see my mouth in relation to poetry. I used to host with a mask on and sometimes audience members would jeer me that I needed to take it off so that they could hear me better (mind you, I was speaking into a microphone). But these are thoughts that I have, these are justifications and excuses and not facts. The fact is that masking reduces how I spread my germs, and the more people the mask, the more we reduce the spread of stuff. It’s that simple but we have blurred this into a partisan issue, an issue of personal and political freedoms. We’ve blurred safety and comfort and prioritize comfort at the risk of all our safeties.
So simply, for 2024, I aim to mask more often and shamelessly. I began the year by ordering more high quality KN95 masks as well as extenders so that they are less of a strain on the ears (they have been okay, the strain has only been slightly lessened if I’m being honest). Let’s please all try to mask more often this year. I’ve already made some decisions based on a COVID calculus: I am taking fewer risks, simply put. I am NOT going to AWP this year. I am wearing masks even when it is uncomfortable, and if I need to eat/drink, do so quickly, outside/away from others if possible, and putting my mask on afterward. I also need to get the latest vaccine and recommend folks do so as well. Do note you may have to pay for them given that the govt doesn’t care anymore, but know it is worth the cost.
I also began the year enrolling for health insurance. I’ve been to urgent care/hospitals more times in these past few weeks than I ever have in my whole life. A previous newsletter mentioned some questions currently going on with my body. And in this country, the only way to receive answers to questions is by paying for them. So pending a few updates, I’ve been approved. The good news. The bad news is that more symptoms (of something…who knows) are popping up. The good news is that it is minor pain, and that nothing concerning seems to be popping up in all the tests. Still, I don’t really have answers outside of this industrialized game of medical process of elimination. I’m left with just more questions and concerns. So this will be a year of trying to prioritize my health and figure out what’s going on in my body. I have been paying for dental insurance ever since I had to get all of my wisdom teeth removed at the end of 2021… but I have not been going to the dentist. So clearly that’s on the schedule to clear up. A previous newsletter also mentioned the situation of hospitals and health in Gaza, and that situation has only declined further with more hospitals attacked and made, well, inhospitable. And yet, the healers there and here and everywhere persist with healing work, because there is no other option. And so, as I remain frustrated at how the empire uses health as capital, as weaponry, I also remain so grateful for having the access that I do and the options that I do.
The other concerns are the health of my grandma and my mom. My family life now, with my mom and my grandma, is complicated to discuss because it is a relationship that is over a half-century old, a relationship far older than I am and with many nuances. My mom is getting older and is starting to develop arthritis, so watching that develop is concerning. My grandma just turned 87, and for her age, she is in great health. However, she has dementia and it is a condition that makes things so complicated and sensitive in ways that are hard to explain beyond experience. Things get especially complicated in terms of caregiving/caretaking (I think taking is the more common term, but I'd rather give than take, you know? Strange words…). My mom and my grandma have a complicated relationship that is over twice as old as I am, meaning that there are things I simply will never be able to get through. Suffice it to say that most days are okay, but there are days when emotions run high– maybe an episode, maybe frustrations, maybe arguments, etc. And, very similar to the situation with my dad, my presence becomes especially important because in addition to being a young able-bodied person to do things like cleaning and snow-shoveling, I also have the role of de-escalation and calming things down. With dementia, there are lots of things like constant stealing accusations as well as [mis]remembering doctor’s directions that make things very tense and complicated.
I spent the last days of 2023 in the hospital with my grandma. But it wasn’t because of her dementia or diverticulosis, we went for a UTI. And, in all the testing for the UTI, they also found a mass. A biopsy happened last week and we have a surgery appointment next month. I plan on staying with my grandma the entire time. It’s all very concerning, but I think my grandma is handling it all okay. Really, better than okay, she’s been a champ honestly. Still things can often be a lot to handle here at home, so I take things day by day. It’s a lot. But at least I am in a better position to do something about it literally now.
So in the chance you may have been wondering, hey, where is Aerik? I have not heard from them lately… it is likely all of these things. So hey hi hullo what’s up here I am.
RELATIONSHIPS
2023 was a year I got to strengthen a lot of my friendships. I made new friends, and got to visit and spend time with old friends. I include family here as well, that I got to strengthen the friendships I have among my family was great, too. In 2023 my friends literally laid hands on me, literally held me and held me up. Once again, as they do every year, my friends keep me alive. I think I’ll leave it as simple as that. To all my friends, thank you so much. I know I can be distant or cold sometimes but I have so much appreciation for you and I’m honored to have you in my life.
I spent a lot of the 2022 newsletter talking about romance, and while I did have a particularly cool encounter with a lovely person this year in my travels & adventures this year, 2023 was NOT about that. And for 2024 I have no interest, really, for so many reasons. Bless!
When I think about 2023, I also think about my relationships with animals in addition to people. I think about how I got to spend time with a bunch of animals in really cool ways, but also thinking about how many animals I saw pass away in 2023. My sister’s dog Bailey passed away, and my brother’s dog Cash passed away. I think about my experience at the SAFTA residency hanging out with and feeding the chickens and ducks and sheep and dog. It was there that I got to see fireflies for the first time in my life. I think about how one morning I woke up to feed the chicks in the basement and found that their duckling neighbors killed them in the night. How I encountered a doe in the woods during one of my day hikes in the holler. The rats I saw scurrying around in the world– in New York City, in Knoxville, in Denver. The fox I encountered at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck that led me to the building I was looking for. That I got to spend time with my friend’s animals, like hanging out with Regina the dog, or Henry and Margot the cats (rest in peace also to Margot <3).
I have been taking small mental notes of the animals I see in photos/videos of Palestine in addition to the people. I notice how animals are not even a thought of consideration or concern for the genocidal warmongers, how animals wild and domestic are caught in the explosions and rubble. I see videos of displaced people in Palestine caring for the cats and dogs who, too, are displaced. I saw a video of Palestinian poet and professor Refaat Alareer feeding a cat on the street, despite being hungry himself. Refaat was martyred a few weeks ago– yes a poet, yes a professor, but clearly and most importantly, a living person. A compassionate caring person in the world, taken away far too soon, far too brutally. I think about Hamas hostages being released with pets in tow, all seeming relatively healthy and happy and grateful for the time and relationships forged with their Hamas captors, if only so-called Stockholm Syndrome. This is contrasted by prisoners and hostages released by Israel, most showing signs and scars of abuse. These are the people Israel refers to in official media as “human animals,” and with them, no sight of any animals.
I think about this also in relation to children. I spent a lot of good quality time with my niece in 2023. I also really relished my time teaching youth workshops this year, and I can tell the feeling is mutual among the kiddos I teach too. Maybe because I grew up the youngest child, maybe because I grew up with the personality of an ornery old man, I grew up believing that I did not like children. This idea persisted well into my adulthood until I spent time with children, namely via my niece. I realized, then, that children were just… people. And so often children are not treated like people, they are treated like, well, animals. Children are among the most vulnerable populations for many reasons, but especially because our country does not give children many rights. When I taught American Politics 101 and we got to the section on voting, I played a hypothetical game with my classes about suffrage. I asked them to give me reasons why people should NOT vote: like kids or felons. They gave me the usual ableist answers we often use to justify restricting suffrage: kids aren’t informed enough, they don’t contribute to society enough, they would vote in ways that would be disastrous, it would take away from their child-innocence, etc etc. But when I revealed statistics about how USAmericans vote in the status quo, like how most voters inherit the party of their family, how most voters are woefully uninformed, much of the validity of those arguments fade away. I mention all of this, in conjunction with the fact that many rights of kids are being attacked currently: many states are passing laws reducing the legal age to work, and our lackluster COVID policies affect youth the most, allowing COVID to mutate into further variants as well the spread of RSV which seems to especially affect young and elderly people. And of course it seems pertinent to mention that children are also the primary victims of genocide: we know that thousands of Palestinian children have been killed by USA-manufactured-and-sold bombs dropped by Israel, many of these children not even a year old. How premature babies were left to die in bombed hospitals in incubators without electricity. It’s truly sick work, the kind of world we are leaving for the future, the kind of worlds we take away from the kids of today.
POETRY PROJECTS
ELECTRIC NOBODY
I began 2023 in partnership with one of my best friends to create a collection of AI remixes of the poems in my first chapbook BODYELECTRONIC. This collection is called Electric Nobody and it is accessible via this link:
https://electricnobody.github.io/#/about
.
Much as I anticipated, it is a project that came and went with not much fanfare. A friend of mine from college did, however, post a lovely mini review of the project, and given that she is a person in many ways heavily invested in the study and public writing of science, it felt especially great to hear of her warm reception to the project. I also received a random $$ tip from someone in the world who encountered a single poem of mine, went to my website, and encountered this project. I am so grateful for these interactions indeed, and I hope you all feel free to explore these poems and place them in conversation with the poems of BODYELECTRONIC as well as the poems you know in your life.
There has been a lot of scrutiny regarding AI this year, and in the poetry field, there were a number of incidents this year, namely involving the poet Liliam Yvonne Bertram and her poems that directly engage with AI and computational systems. I’m not the first and I won’t be the last poet to push the limits of the art form in this manner, and I hope we can engage in these experiments with an open mind but also with a deep regard for compassion and ethics. I hope this project can participate in those conversations as well. But mostly I hope from this project that we can consider even the scariest of technologies in new lights where we can all work together to meet everyone's needs rather than manipulate it all for personal profit.
I never really feared the idea that AI would become sentient and kill humans. I always believed that if AI was as “smart” as we all fear it to be, their intellect would understand history and power politics, would understand the difference between a colonizer and the colonized. In my view, AI sentience could allow for an even larger coalition of sentient beings fighting against all forms of oppression for our collective liberation. Sci-fi novel inc (lol not really…well, unless…!!)
BODYELECTRONIC AUDIOBOOK
Morgan Parker says in a poem this about poetry: The thing about poems is they want to be alive. None of my projects remind me of this more than BODYELECTRONIC does, continuing to live on despite many kinds of death.
This project has been a long time coming. Ever since I figured out how to perform my poem Lagging back in 2018, an audio project has been calling out to me to be created. After a lot of *stuff* happened, the project finally exists and is available on all streaming platforms.
Both in its original upload and to this day, the album has errors. It is both frustrating and endearing, frustrating because I was meticulous about correcting for errors, and they nevertheless appeared outside of my work. Endearing because, in a way, and similar to Electric Nobody, this project continues to self-determine what it looks and sounds like.
I call it an experimental audiobook because I don’t set the poems to music, but I don’t just outright read the poems either. The vocals go through filters or flangers or autotune. Lines, words, and sounds are repeated into redundancy, especially the subject pronoun I. There are glitches, sound effects, and familiar noises. There is heavy collaboration with text-to-speech voices where recitations of poems become collaborative group performances.
I have no idea if the print/text version of BODYLECTRONIC is still available via Trouble Department. The editor went MIA, I haven’t had any correspondence with them in over a year. The audiobook was supposed to be a companion to the text, but is now the main way you can engage with the text (I mean, I could also send you a PDF if you request as well).
The poems from this collection haunt me in the best ways, so please go give it a listen. Take a drive with it on. Take a walk. Exercise. Work. Eat. Open the book and let me read it to you as you read along. But please, give it a stream, it’s on all the main streaming platforms.
MISEDUCATION
Speaking of haunting poems, MISEDUCATION was released in May 2023. This is my 2nd chapbook of poetry, chosen as the winner of the 2022 New Delta Review Chapbook Contest. It felt meant to be in so many ways: NDR is a literary magazine & chapbook press run by the MFA program at Louisiana State University. They (the “they” being MFA students of LSU, meaning the staff is always shifting every year) publish seasonally online and have an annual contest where they select and publish poetry chapbooks. Why does this matter? Well, MISEDUCATION is a poetry collection about academia and my time in grad school. The poems complain, indict, critique, and expose academia. (The wonderful poet Emily Pérez published a review of MISEDUCATION at RHINO POETRY gives a great idea/summation of the book as well – thank you Emily!!!). This is all to say that I believe this collection particularly resonated for these readers because they were right in the thick of their own journey and found many parallels. This is so meaningful because what bloomed isn’t simply that I got my little book into the world. It meant real relationships with those first readers, who are now dear poetry colleagues– including and especially the final judge, Dorothy Chan.
And obviously I am biased, but it’s good! Plz buy a copy and tell me what you think. I have copies, so if you want a signed copy you can just dm me.
I think the thing I lament is that I have not done a good job promoting this chapbook. I have not brought extras with me for my performances, and when I do, I always feel weird about self-advertising. I dunno! For example, I performed at a marketplace last weekend and all I kept thinking was “there are so many people selling things, I don’t wanna have people spend more money” but what I am doing isn’t a protest, what I am doing is not communicating, not giving people the option to buy my work who may want to. People come to a marketplace to spend money. And, most importantly, nobody is going to market my work except me. I have to do this work, and I have to constant remember that these are the times when my work is most important, so I need to put my work out there.
Sooooooooo, again, if you don’t have a copy, please hit me up!
I’m not done with MISEDUCATION. I don’t have any desire to produce music for it, but I do have a vision of reading the whole thing to music. Like an arrangement I practice with musicians and we perform live. I would love to see that for MISEDUCATION. I also have an idea of who I might do that with, so I just need to communicate and make it happen! Stay tuned.
I also want to end by remarking about how ME has grown for me as a reader. It’s amazing to me that one of the first poems I ever got published back in 2019 is included in this collection and you likely wouldn’t be able to identify which one it is. I find poems like “Armada” and “Casually Cruel” to have meaning beyond their specific circumstances in academia and may be generally applied. And I think often of the poem “Elegy” in how academia has real physical impacts on health in addition to thinking about my personal relationship with Mark <3. The title is an elegy and while I dedicated it to Mark Sawyer, the poem still finds resonance and application elsewhere.
Another professor I had a closeness with passed away recently, professor Kirstie McClure. Kirsite was the most brilliant person in that whole department, and I would venture to say most other theorists would agree. She was a fierce thinker, someone who would hold your ideas to account and to the text– such a beautiful thing to witness her do this work in the context of a political theory workshop in a room/world of over-confident and under-read white men whose work is simultaneously lauded and mediocre. Many people, for that reason, would call her a b****, but she really was *that* b****. So many women have to be in order to make it, for better or for worse. Yes I can think of a few situations where her and I had strong back-and-forths wherein I believe she was exerting her whiteness over me, but I think more about how she cared for me and cared for my scholarship in ways nobody else in the department did. Whereas some professors would feign reading my papers and call my words “incoherent” to hide their lack of labor, whereas some professors would be impossible to reach via email, I could always count on her to read and respond, to begin and end with “Ciao” always. She created a seminar for the sole purpose of creating a space to read each others work and provide constructive criticism. I remember many fond conversations at bars where she insisted on paying for the grad students. She even invited me to eat/drink with her at the faculty lounge. When I was a discussant for the political theory workshop, she praised my work– and Kirstie McClure praise is hard earned! She was bold, brilliant, queer, and caring. Thank you, Kirstie, for the [mis]education you have given me. Here is a version of the poem for her:
Elegy
For Kirstie
I am here, again, wishing
For more words; for you–
Catalyst, proof a prof could shoot
the dozens & spit philosophy simultaneously.
Your classes never felt like academics, more
personal conversations would myriad citations.
You defended me like a thesis, even still
fatigued from the onslaught of debacles,
ongoing ethnography of embodied power politics–
It is humbling to be pulled into your gravity.
You live anew in all your students & scholarship.
Where were we, really, when
we needed each other–
AERIAL VECTORS
AERIAL VECTORS is a visual EP or a short film made with the endeavor, simply, of looking up. All footage self-collected over the course of months and the course of travels across the country looking up at the sky. All audio self-produced. Historically, freedom dreams are of flight, of the aerial realm, the air. In these times where skies are polluted, clouds are created and destroyed, where people look up and see white phosphorus or smoke or drones or letters warning of impending strike– it is crucial to continue to look up and bear witness. Watch/Listen/Experience on Vimeo or Youtube.
I met Juliette Lee in Seattle after performing together at AWP. Her poems, out of all the poems I heard that day, stayed with me. To my luck, we learned that we both lived in Denver and became fast friends. We went to poetry readings, made art together, and I even got to hang out with her cats, which I think I mentioned earlier in the newsletter. I mention Juliette here again because her book Aerial Concave Without Cloud very much inspired this project. Ever since experiencing her poems, I find myself sky gazing and looking upward. I just keep thinking about it, and it helps me look everywhere– looking down after looking up, looking closely after looking so far away.
In addition to thinking about the sky, I made this project because I have been making music. I’ve been making music and now I have piles of beats, piles of songs. It’s becoming a problem because I want to release it, but it also feels like an injustice to quietly release it and let it gather dust, unnoticed. I suppose that’s the whole fear of the music industry– that XYZ is necessary in order to get listens/streams. I’m trying to fight against that even as I anticipate what “playing the game” may look like for me. But this is an attempt to release some music and not worry about the lyrical content. This project in particular is one about looking up, looking forward, watching differently, witnessing fully.
RESIDENCIES
2023 was especially cool because I got to go on my first artist residency, and not just one, TWO.
I won a fellowship to attend the Sundress residency in Knoxville, TN, and I was there for 2 weeks. It was so amazing to be in a different state/space/climate in the hollers of Knoxville. I learned why the site was called Firefly Farms and I got to see fireflies for the first time! I was expecting to be rather solitary, but it ended up being a wonderful opportunity to meet a lot of people, especially because my stay also aligned with a camping writing residency that was happening at the same time on site, so I got to meet workshop faculty and attendees alike in addition to my co-residents. Also my lovely friend Sam was in Knoxville and we got to have a lovely day at the QUARRY, I WENT SWIMMING IN A QUARRY SWIMMING HOLE, all caps because it was most excellent.
The second residency was at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY. Basically this was the site where the Chrysalis Institute was hosting their alumni in-person retreat for alum of the Milkweed Learning Hub fellowship. I attended the MLH virtually in fall 2022 and it was most excellent to see an investment in me as an artist not just in the capacity of the art I create, but me as a person. Truly a blessing to have been invited into this circle of wonderful artists of color. What a wonderful week. The campus was hosting a number of different residencies at the time, including one on “Somatic Abolition” and as a result, there were a lot of people of color and specifically Black people on campus, and it was so delightful to walk around and mutually see people, look each other in the eyes, greet each other. I did a lot of meditation and qi gong during my time, some reading, some writing, a lot of talking with people, especially in our cohort– a cohort made up of two different cohorts of MLH. I got a massage, I played in a drum circle, I kayaked, I participated in “soulful meditation” (which was so much fun, btw, it was like a sober dance party). And I did make some art– my visit was during the middle of October and Palestine was heavy on my heart and mind. So many conversations we had came back to talking about indigeneity. During this time I wrote one of my favorite poems I’ve written in a long time, and did a bit of reading. Also, I had space to myself, so I got to rehearse my spoken word and my music in a way I can’t usually in my everyday life, so that was really cool.
Basically I just feel so lucky that I got these residency opportunities. They were so refreshing, they helped me reexamine my work and give me space and time to just rejuvenate my energy. I would definitely like to apply for more, but they are so competitive and rare, so how I feel at the moment is just a lot of gratitude for having these experiences.
WORKSHOPS/TEACHING
This was also a year where I got to do a lot of teaching. I did youth and adult workshops. I got to teach at the Queer Creatives retreat with Lighthouse what I like to think of as my signature workshop: Body Politics. I taught two with the Denver Art Museum: one on an exhibit on Japanese calligraphy where we wrote haikus & tankas and considered the materiality and media of poetry; the other were we talked about art and car culture in Latinx communities, read poetry by Corky Gonzales, and wrote self-portrait poems inspired by these pieces.
Not quite a workshop, but I was also invited as a guest poet to a poetry seminar at CU Denver. I was on a panel at the JaiPur Literary Festival in Boulder, CO as well with Crisosto Apache, Jason Masino, and Hilary Leftwich, all super wonderful & talented CO writers, and so it has been really cool to speak about poetry & education in addition to speaking poetry.
Again, not quite a workshop but also a moment where I got to engage poetry differently, as the 2022 champion I got to attend the 2023 Slamming Bricks Queer Poetry Slam in Grand Junction as a ~guest judge~ and ~guest feature~. It was beautiful for so many reasons: that it was the last Slamming Bricks event in GJ (the organizer, Caleb, moved to Albuquerque, NM), that it was held at the city’s history theater, the Avalon, that it featured a shortfilm documentary of last year’s Slamming Bricks (and I was featured in briefly! My eyes welled up watching like damn, that’s me! This is us!) that Caleb grant funded to make sure everyone was paid (me included, for judging as well as a travel stipend – I know how tricky money is for poetry events and I don’t take these efforts to make sure artists get compensated lightly, so truly, thank you Caleb for this work!)
For my youth workshops, most often with 4th graders at a few different schools, we talked wordplay, forms (I love teaching kids the “Skinny” poetry form because it is really easy and fun, it is really capacious in that it allows for narrative and lyric and everything in between, and it is a contemporary poetry form created by Truth Thomas, who is a Black American poet and who has published a lovely anthology of Skinny poems that I use frequently as a teaching aid), and performance practice. I really love teaching and I really appreciate that poetry brings me in spaces where I can interact with youth and elders and everyone in between.
Really looking forward to 2024, I already have a few workshops coming up that I will be facilitating, one in particular a concept I have been marinating on for years now. Get ready!
PRIZES AND HONORABLE MENTIONS
My poems got nominated for prizes in 2023 in ways that surprised me. I had poems nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart– no idea if they actually won, probably not. But that editors selected my poems out of all of the poems they published to be nominated is a big deal. One of the hidden boons of publishing work is meeting folks who are being published next to you and meeting folks who are reading what you published– yes generally readers, but notably the editors, and staff readers! Running a publication is often a grueling labor of love without much financial compensation. We artists exist in an ecosystem held up so much by mutual aid and mutual respect. So shoutout to the teams at Cobra Milk and ANMLY for publishing, nominating, and championing my poetry and the poetry of so many other fantastic and lovely artists.
BODYPOLITIC is still making the rounds in the world, but even though it keeps getting rejected after all this time and all the edits, it is also still getting recognized in Poetry prizes. In 2023, BODYPOLITIC was a semifinalist for the 2023 Saturnalia Prize, for the River River reading period, for the Sundress reading period, and for the Philip Levine Poetry Prize. That’s FOUR different times where BP was able to rise up to the top of piles of 500+ poetry collections. Interestingly, it was recognized again for Saturnalia and the Philip Levine Poetry Prize after being finalist for both prizes in 2022, so it’s cool to know the readers of those places consistently enjoy my work. I’m super honored and grateful for the recognition, but not gonna lie, it’s been hard to maintain a positive attitude about this process. But I step back and look at the industry. It’s so difficult in so many ways. All that I have been able to do in this industry, in the time that I have, is really amazing.
I have, once again, made significant edits to the manuscript and, once again, I believe it is stronger than ever. I suppose we are gonna keep playing this silly little game until it comes out. But it will come out, even if I have to start my own publishing house in order to make that happen.
Here’s what I will say. I believe these poems to be urgent and needed immediately. The publishing industry doesn’t quite work that way. Here is my idea of loophole/compromise: I am just going to make a chapbook/zine out of a selection of BP poems and self-publish it so that I can release those on my schedule while still allowing BP to be eligible for first book reading periods. But of course, I have more in mind. In fact, let’s not call this smaller sample of poems a chapbook or a zine, let’s call it an album, and let’s call the page versions lyrics, and let’s call the booklet liner notes…
PUBLICATIONS OF 2022 (Poems and Media Features)
OKAY FIRST THING IS FIRST, I HAD A WHOLE FEATURE DONE OF ME IN THE CU BOULDER STUDENT NEWSPAPER. THIS WAS SUCH A SURPRISE AND WAS SO WILD TO READ. I DON’T THINK I CELEBRATED THIS ARTICLE ENOUGH WHEN IT HAPPENED SO HERE IT IS UP FIRST IN ALL CAPS. My thanks to Julie Carr for this recognition and the opportunity.
It’s also worth mentioning that I was also featured on a podcast called The Poets that features local Colorado poets with a set of poems and a short convo about the poems. Please check out my episode and tell me what you think!
So I didn’t publish a lot a lot this year– I didn’t really submit much this year. I changed my website to show my poems per project as opposed to chronologically. But! The stuff that I did publish is good stuff, you should definitely consider reading!
This was a year of surprising solicitations– THREE of these publications were solicited, so my thanks to the editors for hunting me down to get my poems, truly an honor to be solicited for poems! But generally it is wonderful to be included in these publications. In a time where even the poetry industry demonstrates various forms of fascist allegiance, it feels great to be in community with publications who are run by queer people, run by people of color, run by people who believe in social justice and its relationship to poetry. So much of my hesitancy to submit work anymore is simply that I don’t trust many outlets anymore. Seeing outlets like Poetry Foundation, like Chestnut Review, etc use poetry from Palestinian writers in their collections while openly censoring pro-Palestine and anti-Zionist posts has been severely disappointing to the point where I am only interested in working with folks I know.
In any case, here is the list with links when available:
_A Me Sandwich_ / interview included as well as poem audio / Bait/Switch / Online / December 2023
_Body Language_ / Foglifter Journal / Issue 8.1 / Print / May 2023
_Citizen_ / The Rumpus / National Poetry Month Series / Online / April 2023
_Mourning Meditations_ / ANMLY / Issue 36 / Online / April 2023
_BodyAquatic | BodyHistoric_ ; and _A Story About My Body_ / Cobra Milk / Issue 4 / Online / May 2023
_Anti-Elegy for Black Fat_ / Rogue Agent / Issue 94 / Online / January 2023
_Gigan for Opening The Urn_ / Indiana Review / Issue 45.1 / Summer 2023 / Print
_Returning_ / Infinite Constellations: Speculative Futures Anthology / Print / March 2023
PERFORMANCES
I love to perform and it feels very much the bread and butter of my poetry practice. 2023 was a year I continued to push my performance practice. I got to perform in Seattle this year, and even more special than the location was the fact that the 3 times I performed in Seattle, I had a friend in the audience! That is so special and rare and doesn’t really happen often even when I perform hometown, so my abounding gratitude to Nathan and Ry and Stephanie, so grateful for our friendships across time and place.
I think the major performances for me this year were the MISEDUCATION readings (my thanks to Emelie, Dorothy, Nate, Bri, and of course/as always Alisha for performing with me for these events, luv y’all!!!). I think the BE release was super performative and experimental, so the ME readings felt a bit more mild in comparison. But I love how these poems sound and feel in the air and I would like to put them in the air more often.
While these are features, which have been super important, I also tried, to the best of my health & availability, to attend more open mics. After all, as a host of Slam Nuba, and generally as a local poet, I believe it is critical to support other open mics, support other organizers, support other poets, get a feel of the local scene as it constantly shifts, and maintain my own performance craft. While not nearly as frequent as, say, 2019, I am back to losing poetry slams at the Mercury Café on Sundays sometimes (haha).
I think the last thing I wanna mention is that I have been experimenting with performing alongside my audio production (most often facilitate by performing alongside my DJ sister). There were a few events where I performed poetry with my music, and even a few times were I SANG to my music. For 2024 I am trying to get into music venues and to perform next to musicians and with my music. We’ll see!
Okay, so I copied my list of events from my website:
Guest Poet class visit for Poetics Seminar / University of Colorado, Denver / Denver, CO / November 29, 2023
Faculty for Queer Creatives poetry retreat (Workshop Facilitator, Panelist, and Featured Reader) / Lighthouse Writers Workshop / Denver, CO / in-person / October 27-29, 2023
Artist Residency / The Chrysalis Institute & The Omega Institute / October 9-13, 2023
Featured poet for Off the Clock Vaudeville Variety show / The Clocktower Cabaret / Denver, CO / October 6, 2023
Featured poet for local author spotlight event / Counterpath / Denver, CO / September 30, 2023
Featured poetry workshop facilitator for Drop In Writing Sessions / Denver Art Museum & Lighthouse Writers Workshop / Denver, CO / virtual / September 26, 2023
Guest Judge & Performer for 5th Annual Slamming Bricks Poetry Slam / Grand Junction, CO / September 9, 2023
Guest host for Writing-In-Color retreat closing ceremony event / Lighthouse Writers Workshop / Denver, CO / August 20, 2023
Featured poet for F-Bomb event / Mercury Café / Denver, CO / August 15, 2023
Featured poet for Queer Poetry Jam event / Bus Stop Gallery / Boulder, CO / July 23, 2023
Featured poet for Black and Indigenous Ecologies Poetry Reading event / Counterpath / Denver, CO / July 7, 2023
Featured poetry workshop facilitator for Drop In Writing Sessions / Denver Art Museum & Lighthouse Writers Workshop / Denver, CO / virtual / June 27, 2023
MISEDUCATION release event / Counterpath / Denver, CO / June 17, 2023
Featured poet for Off the Clock Vaudeville Variety show / The Clocktower Cabaret / Denver, CO / June 16, 2023
Artist Summer Residency / The Sundress Academy for the Arts / Knoxville, TN / May 22 - June 4, 2023
Featured poet for And Now Featuring… show / Trident Café / Boulder, CO / May 18, 2023
MISEDUCATION virtual release event & conversation with Dorothy Chan / hosted by New Delta Review / virtual / May 13, 2023
Featured poet for Off the Clock Vaudeville Variety show / The Clocktower Cabaret / Denver, CO / May 5, 2023
Featured poet for Foglifter Journal Issue 8.1 Release / San Francisco, CA (virtual) / April 21, 2023
Featured poet for Off the Clock Vaudeville Variety show / The Clocktower Cabaret / Denver, CO / April 4, 2023
Featured poet for Queer Lit and Performance Festival / University of Colorado Boulder and Counterpath / Boulder, CO and Denver, CO / March 17 & 18, 2023
Featured poet for offsite events / Association of Writers & Writing Programs Conference / Seattle, WA / March 8-11, 2023
Wednesday evening 6-9PM at The Blarney Stone with New Delta Review celebrating forthcoming NDR chapbook MISEDUCATION
Friday evening 5-7PM at Doghouse Leathers celebrating the Listen to Your Skin Anthology
Friday evening 7-9PM at Havana Social Club with Nightboat Books, The Elephants, and FC2 celebrating the Infinite Constellations Anthology
Featured poet for Off the Clock Vaudeville Variety show / The Clocktower Cabaret / Denver, CO / March 2023
Loving at Intersections: A Confessional featured poet / Union Hall / Denver, CO / February 2023
Shades of Honey: Homecoming featured reader / Town Hall Collaborative / Denver, CO / January 2023
STATS AND SUPERLATIVES
Here are some of the stats I collected about my submissions this year based on some spreadsheets I [mostly] maintain through the year. Noticeably, I submitted a lot less, and when I did submit, it was mostly for book prizes. I didn’t submit my poems very often this year, and when I did they were rejected. The poems I had published this year were acceptances from the previous year and/or solicited. Surprisingly, I was solicited 3 times for poems in 2023, something only possibly in the momentum of performing, publishing, and networking, so I’m very grateful for those fields aligning for me in that way.
Statistics:
Total Submissions: 23
Total Acceptances: 1
Total Rejections: 16
Pending: 6
Book: 16 (4 finalist- also got 4 finalists last year)
Chapbook: 1
Fellowships: 3 (1 win (!!!))
Single Poem: 3
Performances total: 24 shows (~2 month)
I don’t feel bad about these statistics even though they are definitely less than what 2022 looked like. Even though I technically did fewer performances in 2023, it didn’t feel like it at all. It felt like I was always performing– and maybe that’s because I went to open mics more frequently for a period of time instead of just going out for features.
What is also clear is that this was a year for different things. 2022 was bustling with feelings in a different way that 2023 felt. 2023 I read a lot more, I traveled more, I spent more time with people and made new friends while holding on to old friendships, I experienced things for the first time ever in my life, and I crafted in new mediums.
The reading makes sense! I was on planes and buses a lot. I was a reader for the Colorado book awards. I became a reader for Micro Podcast. I was in a reading group about elements of Style. I did TWO artist residencies. I had jury duty. I spent time in hospitals. I took advantage of local libraries wherever I was. I bought so many books at AWP. So of course I read a lot more than I did last year. Even still I started and did not finish so many books that I would eventually like to return to.
I read 64 books total this year.
Of those, 10 were chapbooks.
I started 10 additional books that I just haven’t finished yet.
Here are some spotify wrapped numbers as well.
Here are my top 5 albums and books, along with 2 top choices of chapbooks and EPs (again, I love small projects and I want to give them their deserved recognition).
Fav Music Projects of 2023:
Raven – Kelela
S.O.S – SZA
Heaven Knows – PinkPantheress
Fountain Baby – Amaarae
Desire, I Want To Turn Into You – Caroline Polachek
going…going…GONE – Hemlocke Springs (EP)
BB/ANG3L – Tinashe (EP {is this an EP? It’s short like one})
When The Poems Do What They Do – Aja Monet (Spoken Word Album - highly recommend!!!)
Fav Reads of 2023 (These are all poetry btw):
Bluest Nude – Ama Codjoe (I had this book on my list last year, but I didn’t even finish it back then and still admired it deeply. I finished & reread this year & talked about it with anyone who’d listen. I just love this book!)
Banana [ ] – Paul Hlava Ceballos (Just such a brilliant book!)
GENESIS– Crisosto Apache (and I am currently reading their 2nd book Ghostword!)CRUEL/CRUEL – Dior J. Stephens (I thoroughly enjoyed this book, a collection that reminds me to take space and take risks and make music however possible.
I/I – Katherine Indermaur
Tie Your Shoes Kid – Meta Sarmiento (Chapbook)
Killing It – Gaia Rajan (Chapbook)
When The Poems Do What They Do – Aja Monet (Spoken Word Album - highly recommend!!! I’m putting it on both lists because it fits on both!)
END OF NEWSLETTER TOWARD 2024
OMG I’m finally done! Clearly 2023 was a big year, all the more reason why I felt it important to review and archive. I have a lot of pessimism for 2024, but also a lot of ambition and goals. Wow, you made it here. Thanks for reading! I think I’ll spare you all from writing anymore about what I have planned for 2024, but I feel particularly ambitious!
(LAST BUT NOT LEAST, REMEMBER THAT I HOST SLAM NUBA EVERY FINAL FRIDAY AT REDLINE ART GALLERY IN DENVER, CO! EVERY FINAL FRIDAY! WITH MY SISTER ALISHA DJING! IT’S A FUN TIME!).
Okay, no more for now. Until next time friends & spirits, thanks for stopping by The Haunt.
–phaentom[poet] aka Aerik