#kay ulanday barrett

[fiercynn]

Hey do you have any poetry you can suggest because I saw your response to that OP, I’d love some stuff to read!

so i started responding to another similar ask by @unitedstates0fdakota but i accidentally posted it when it was incomplete so i decided to continue here! check out that post for the first two recs, george abraham's birthright and romeo oriogun's sacrament of bodies

more than organs, kay ulanday barrett

kay ulanday barrett is a poet, performer, and educator, navigating life as a disabled filipinx-amerikan transgnder queer in the u.s. with struggle, resistance, and laughter. pamela sneed, one of the reviewers quoted on the back of more than organs, describes the collection as about “hunger that is physical, spiritual, and queer”, and i think hunger is an excellent way to put it. i love how the pieces in this collection oscillate between visceral and playful – there’s a poem called “pain, an epistle” but also one called “actually, jenny schecter wasn’t the worst”.

you googled “authentic” / & now are seated next to me. / as I speed walk you to the cart / aunty gives me the last dish / gets the idea that I’ve waited too long / for something to just taste right. / I wish for a dumpling stuff / of bullet skins to be the shrapnel / in every white man’s throat. / go ahead / say the word oriental / at my table / one more time. —  “I just want dimsum undisturbed by wypipo”

a theory of birds, zaina alsous

zaina alsous is a prison abolitionist, a daughter of the palestinian diaspora, and a movement worker in south florida. the blurb for a theory of birds describes it as “putting ecological conservation in conversation with arab racial formation, state vernacular with the chatter of birds”, and as someone who wanted to be an ornithologist as a child and now works in climate policy, it feels like she wrote this to speak to my soul.

Inside the dodo bird is a forest, Inside the forest a peach analog, Inside the peach analog a woman, Inside the woman a lake of funerals, disappointed male lovers, scientists, Inside the lake a volcano of whale songs, Inside the volcano a language of naming, Inside the language an algorithm for de-extinction, Inside the algorithm blued dynamite to dissolve the colony’s Sun, twinkle twinkle, I didn’t mean to fall in love with failure, its molting rapture, I didn’t mean to name myself from a necklace of silent vowels, I didn’t go looking from for the bird, I entered through the empty cage, hips first —  “Bird Prelude”

boy with thorn, rickey laurentiis

rickey laurentiis is a poet who was raised in new orleans, louisiana, to study light. this is true for a lot of poetry imo, but every piece in boy with thorn requires reading at least twice in a row, because laurentiis’s use of language is so deft and stuffed with meaning that i needed to experience it from different angles. the description for the collection tells us “in a landscape at once the brutal american south as it is the brutal mind, boy with thorn interrogates the genesis of all poetic creation—the imagination itself, questioning what role it plays in both our fascinations with and repulsion from a national history of racial and sexual violence”.

Therefore, my head was kingless. I was a head alone, moaning in a wet black field. I was like any of those deserter slaves whose graves are just the pikes raised for their heads, reshackled, blue and plain as fear. All night I whistled at a sky that mocked me, that fluently changed its grammar as if to match desire in my eye. My freedom is possible, it said. —  “Conditions for a Southern Gothic”

eye level, jenny xie

this is kind of cheating because i first read eye level when it came out in 2017, but i recently reread it so i feel like it counts! jenny xie was born in anhui province, china, and now lives in the united states. eye level travels with xie from phnom penh to corfu to hanoi to new york city, and her descriptions piercing, sensual, and bottomless.

Sunday, awake with this headache. I pull apart the evening with a fork. White clot behind the eyes. Someone once told me, before and after is just another false binary. The warmed-over bones of January. I had no passport. Beneath the stove, two mice made a paradise out of a button of peanut butter. Suffering operates by its own logic. Its gropics and reversals. Ample, in ways that are exquisite. And how it leaves —not unlike how it arrives, without clear notice. —  “Zuihitsu”

i also post about english-language palestinian poetry (both written in english and in translation) in my #palestinian poets series, each of which features poems you can find online!

#poetry #kay ulanday barrett #zaina alsous #rickey laurentiis #jenny xie #asking me answering you

[nyxbarb]

“Fingertips pressed on lychee skin, our version of prayer. Not to mention, the way you taught me to pick apart until we found tender. How we knew somehow together, there could be sweetness.”

— by Kay Ulanday Barrett; Root Systems.

#Kay Ulanday Barrett #Root Systems #quote #poem #poetry

[cistematicchaos]

TW cancer, surgery, ableism, talk of death and transphobia

Two of my favorite quotes from the article:

 Image Description: Two screen shots of part of the above article reading:

“After more than three hours in an ER and over 24 hours in the hospital, after various doctors prodded and ignored and misgendered me after sharing my pronouns, I received a “Congratulations, you’re pregnant!” parting gift basket from the hospital. Another parting gift: they found a plum-sized cyst in my lower right pelvic region. We named the mass of blood and tissue “Cystina,” a job at the frequently intimidating poetic form, because what is being queer but making new names for the things that grow inside you?”

And:

“I am still trying to figure out how a catastrophe and a blessing can happen at once, can be held in the same hand, lived in the same body. I’ve come to believe euphoria is as fluid as gender; that even while the removal of my uterus wasn’t affirming as it is for some, it doesn’t have to be. My elation need not fit any specific script. How my body pivots can be its own kind of illumination.

“Congratulations,” I whisper to my body when no one is looking.”You’re doing it. You are trying. Isn’t that something?”

END ID

#Kay Ulanday Barrett is the author #A trans disabled Filipinx wr #iter! #which is so fucking coollll #transphobia #ableism #physical disabilities #cancer #surgery #Actually disabled #sooo fucking cool omg #read it read it pls #if you can #Chaotic Shit

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

for the last couple years I've tried to journal every day and I've gotten better at writing much longer more observational and emotionally rich entries, and every time I fill a whole page+ and my hand aches in a tiny satisfying way I remember this time I was assisting Kay Ulanday Barrett at a conference and during their keynote they said "a lot of people think they don't write poetry but then they keep a journal," which makes me feel terribly warm about small and personal acts of creation

[soupmetal666]

TRANSGENDER, NONBINARY, GENDERQUEER and TWO-SPIRIT POETS YOU SHOULD READ!

Here's a non-exhaustive list in alphabetical order by author last name. The majority listed here have published full-length poetry collections and/or chapbooks, but some have not, and have published poems in publications you can find online. Some also write in other genres, as well, and/or make art in other mediums. Consider reblogging it and adding to it if you so desire. My background is primarily in "academic" poetry, for better or worse, and I'm less knowledgeable about slam poetry/poets who don't publish in avenues approved by the academy or are not in academic circles. I've only listed poets here whose work I have read. So there are certainly people worth reading that I'm missing.

Andrea Abi-Karam

Samuel Ace

Jada Renée Allen

Justice Ameer

Ryka Aoki

Cameron Awkward-Rich

Noah Baldino

Ari Banias

Kay Ulanday Barrett

Oliver Baez Bendorf

Julian Talamantez Brolaski

Stephanie Burt

Kayleb Rae Candrilli

Jos Charles

Ching-In Chen

Travis Hedge Coke

CAConrad

jayy dodd

J Jennifer Espinoza

T. Fleischmann

Kay Gabriel

Aeon Ginsberg

torrin a. greathouse

Kamden Hilliard

Stephen Ira

Cyrée Jarelle Johnson

Rickey Laurentiis

Dawn Lundy Martin

Noor Ibn Najam

Trace Peterson

Raquel Salas Rivera

Trish Salah

Danez Smith

TC Tolbert

Chrysanthemum Tran

Joshua Whitehead

Kit Yan

In addition, two wonderfully edited trans poetry anthologies published by Nightboat Books that include many of these writers' work:

Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics, edited by TC Tolbert and Trace Peterson

We Want it All: A Radical Anthology of Trans Poetics, edited by Andrea Abi-Karam and Kay Gabriel

Also, some online literary journals regularly publishing trans and nonbinary poetry:

https://foglifterjournal.com/

https://www.peachmgzn.com/

https://beestungmag.com/

The current moment is a very exciting time for trans poetics. These are brilliant poets and thinkers publishing work that's worth your time. Poetry is not everyone's cup of tea, certainly, but I wish more people knew about how many awesome trans poets are out there right now making amazing and important art.

#poetry #trans writers #trans literature #trans poetry #transgender poets #nonbinary poets #genderqueer poets #two-spirit poets #trans poetics #resource #books #reading #transgender poetry

[protoslacker]

As I travel around the country with the book, I am encountering people from many communities who are eager to grapple with cure, to reach into a deep, complex, contradictory body-mind politics. I find this heartening because in order to create liberation, we need a body-mind politics that is as messy as our actual lived flesh-and-blood realities.

Eli Clare in interview with Kay Ulanday Barrett at Lambda Literary. Eli Clare on Examining Disability Justice and Writing Cross-Genre

Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling with Cure by Eli Clare

#book #body-mind #cure #difference

[brownroundboi]

It's Virgo season, friends!!! Here's an earth cutie Tuesday dump/drops! Swipe & attend my event this week please please? — Join us at @aaww_nyc for another Mouth to Mouth with Open Mic on this THURSDAY 8/25 at 7 PM ET! Hosted and curated by Kay Ulanday Barrett and @jimena_lu, this month Mouth to Mouth celebrates powerhouse writers @dr_chairbreaker + @itswalela! Mouth to Mouth seeks to provide a safer community space for queer and trans BIPOC folx and rising migrant artists. We seek to uplift these voices and ask all allies to step back & show your support by cheering our performers on. Limited open mic slots are available! To put your name in for lottery selection, SIGN UP HERE by August 23! Performers will be randomly selected 24 hours before the event! ID: - white frosted cake & purple icing flowers. Purple text on cake "Thanks for listening to me complain." Via @squigglemoon - A pink background, photos of Black & brown queer & Transgender people range in race, size, gender, & style. Text black reads "Come celebrate Mouth to Mouth, hosted & curated by Kay Ulanday Barrett & Jimena Lucero! Black text reads, Featuring @dr_chairbreaker & Walela Nehanda. - meme of a starting of a longanisa person reading a book in black & white. Text: Virgo: how to say fuck you in a nice way. - a Black woman, @ziwef in all red peach outfit between two u.s flags. Text above: Earth is in its flop era. - boba tea is shown up close with a label that reads: AN XIE TEA. _____ #Nonbinary #Transgender #Queer #QueerWriting #Poetry #Spoonie #Disabled https://www.instagram.com/p/Chn5oo6OzHF/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

#nonbinary #transgender #queer #queerwriting #poetry #spoonie #disabled

[backyardflaneur916]

Bringing back the Beverage And Book series or #BNB

I have been wanting this book ever since I saw a video of Kay Ulanday Barrett performing/reading at a university and I saw them on an interview on an Instagram Live. My young friend made note of it so he gifted it to me. I received it on Easter Sunday. Perfect for National Poetry Month.

Photo ID: MORE THAN ORGANS [by] KAY ULANDAY BARRETT cover art is dark purple like night sky with with scattered white dots like stars, a heart organ image, the title and author name in bold capital orange letters, two medals: 1) silver circle Stonewall Honor Book with an image of a black upside down triangle and a pink sphere and a open book with American Library Association in white print inside the the black triangle 2) gold coin like image Lambda Literary Awards Finalist with a Lambda symbol Laurel leaves cross tied with ribbons and an open book. G i na brand Philippine guava juice can. Book and drink on a off white placemat with brown polka dots.

#BookAndBeverage #BookNBevvie #NationalPoetryMonth #BNB

[holeymolars]

TRANS AND NON-BINARY POETRY RECS:

What I really want to know is how rough, Melissa, by TC Tolbert (2021)

Time-Lapse Video of Trans Woman Collapsing Inward Like a Dying Star by Joshua Jennifer Espinoza (2020)

memories of the good daughter by Raquel Salas Rivera (2018)

Three Definitions of Crossdressing by Silas Denver Melvin (2020)

name/s by Andrea Abi-Karam

A Transition like a Mexican Telenovela by Caleb T. Estrada (2021)

On Examination/Dereliction by torrin a. greathouse (2020)

Song for the Kicked Out by Kay Ulanday Barrett (2012)

Glitter by Keaton St. James (2016)

un [naming] / trans (After Golden) by Angelic Proof (2021)

What Must Be by Khalil F. Jordache (1984)

Dream Ending in a Host of Angels Zipping Me into My Grandmother’s Dress by Bradley Trumpfheller (2019)

Publick Universal Friend Contends with Orthography & Meditates in an Emergency by Day Heisinger-Nixon

#I will add more in the future!!!!! or make another post #trans poetry #trans art #queer poetry #transpoetry #silas denver melvin #caleb t estrada #joshua jennifer espinoza #tc tolbert #raquel salas rivera #andrea abi-karam #torrin a. greathouse #Kay ulanday barrett #keaton st. james #boykeats #sweatermuppet #angelic proof #khalil f jordache #bradley trumpfheller #day heisinger-nixon

[kitchen-light]

We didn’t get it then, you training us for end of times, or maybe, bringing us back to our beginning.

Kay Ulanday Barrett, from their poem “Root Systems”, published on Poets.Org

#kay ulanday barrett #quotes #poetry #words #found* #on time #the apocalypse

[wintryblight]

hello! i've been trying to get into reading poetry lately, i think it's really neat - i was wondering if you had any good poems about photography? your blog is wonderful, thank you <3

hi anon! i’m so glad you’ve been getting into poetry, & i hope my blog can guide you along this journey. here are some poems on photography for you. here is another neat collection that i think you’d enjoy. i’d also suggest you look into ekphrastic poetry in general if you are interested in poems about other art forms as a way to introduce yourself to more poetry. enjoy reading!

Carolina Ebeid, “Punctum / Metaphor” | Love remains a kind of present tense. This is how we describe the scenes in photographs—as though the actions in them were still happening.

Susan Rich, “The Photograph Suggests a Hidden Life” | Tonight, I search the photograph / to detect again his history—the plagues / of bewilderment—the tracks that follow / me through the unseen branches / of our family tree

Omotara James, “Pier 52″ | As of tomorrow and the day after. As of this darkening gelatin and silver. As of the moon and the monsoon rain.

Paisley Rekdal, “Murano” | Someone takes a photo. For a moment, the room / fills with light behind which we hear / the scissor’s dulling snap.

May Swenson, “Double Exposure” | Taking a photo of you taking a photo of me, I see / the black snout of the camera framed by hair, where / your face should be.

Kay Ulanday Barrett, “While looking at photo albums” | I press my eyes shut – cup ghost howl – cheeks splint wood worn – which is to say – learn to make myself a harbor

#poetry #web weaving #compilation #reading list #recommendation #photography #susan rich #paisley rekdal #may swenson #kay ulanday barrett #omorata james #carolina ebeid

[transmegaphone]

mama said that I was the devil, made this journey here a waste, made too American and too unruly couldn’t I just wear dresses, make money, and behave? mama said leave this house, her spirit broken by ache all my belongings freckled the streets I slept outside, spirit stayin’ up, my journey isn’t self-made

song for the kicked out by Kay Ulanday Barrett

#kay ulanday barrett #poetry #transmedia

[lifeinpoetry]

       and what is hunger anyway, but the carving            out of emptiness,    the learning to always              save something                         for later?

— Kay Ulanday Barrett, from “Aunties Love It When Seafood Is on Sale,” published in Cosmonauts Avenue

#quote #Kay Ulanday Barrett #poetry #Cosmonauts Avenue #out of my collection #Aunties Love It When Seafood Is on Sale

[arofili]

BOOKS I READ IN 2019 ✧ when the chant comes by kay ulanday barrett

     we can do without the kissing.      none of this could possibly say:      cry it out, you’re alright,      cry it out, you’re alright.

—from “Midwestern Queer Love For Brown People”

#when the chant comes #kay ulanday barrett #queer #poetryedit #queer poetry #my edit #tefain nin #bk19

[smallpressdistribution]

"I am most grateful for June Jordan’s ‘Poetry for the People: A Revolutionary Blueprint’; this work offers guidelines. The guidelines begin: 1. Read it aloud. 2. Is it a poem? 3. What is its purpose? Critique from the get-go, about PURPOSE. She cultivated rooms of poets who could be themselves unapologetically, and that has purpose." 

Kay Ulanday Barrett explores the legacy of June Jordan in “Writing and Teaching in a Time of Crisis: Lessons from June Jordan,” a panel with Taiyo Na, Sofía Snow, and Bill Zavatsky at Poets House.

#writing and teaching in a time of crisis #kay ulanday barrett #june jordan #poets house

[wocinsolidarity]

Transgender Awareness Week is an annual commemoration from November 13 through November 17 to increase visibility for trans people that’s not predicated upon pain, loss, or death. For far too long trans stories have been limited to those told from a cisgender perspective. From slam poets to academics, these 16 trans creators are changing the way their stories are told. Let them lead the way.

#lgbtqia #trans #tpoc #twoc #angelica ross #Lourdes Ashley Hunter #kai cheng thom #janet mock #Juliana Huxtable #laverne cox #Ashlee Marie Preston #Raquel Willis #amos mac #j mase iii #silas howard #reina gossett #jennifer boylan #KORTNEY RYAN ZIEGLER #KAY ULANDAY BARRETT #JEN RICHARDS #queue