THE POETRY QUESTION: TPQ20

Chris and Courtney sit down with Charles K. Carter, author of Salem Revisited (WordTech Poetry), to talk about passions, process, pitfalls, and poetry! 

Charles K. Carter is a queer poet and educator from Iowa. He shares his home with his artist husband and their spoiled pets. He enjoys film, yoga, and live music. Melissa Etheridge is his ultimate obsession. Carter has an MA in creative writing with a poetry concentration from Southern New Hampshire University and an MFA in writing from Lindenwood University. He is a volunteer video curator for Button Poetry. His poems have been featured in several literary journals. Carter is the author of the chapbooks Chasing Sunshine (Lazy Adventurer Publishing), Splinters (Kelsay Books), and Salem Revisited (WordTech Editions). He collaborated on a short illustrated collection of haikus entitled Safety-Pinned Hearts with his husband, Brandon Carter, which was released by Alien Buddha Press. His first full-length collection will be released in 2022.

Chris sits down with Alan Chazaro, author of Piñata Theory and This Isn't a Frank Ocean Cover Album (Black Lawrence Press), to talk about passions, process, pitfalls, and poetry!

Alan Chazaro's Website Bio:

I write about things.

After 10 years working as a public high school teacher in Louisiana, Massachusetts, and California, I decided to pursue my creative interests more seriously and have been living as a freelancer who travels when I can to enjoy cultures around the world. I'm a San Francisco Bay Area local with Mexican dual-citizenship, existing between both countries as I continue to write, edit, teach, and grow. In 2018, I graduated with my MFA in Creative Writing from the University of San Francisco where I was a Lawrence Ferlinghetti Poetry Fellow, which is awarded to a writer “whose work embodies a concern for social justice and freedom of expression.” Previously, I attended Foothill Community College, and later UC Berkeley, where I participated in June Jordan's Poetry for the People program. I also picked up some game from Patricia Smith, among others, at the Voices Of Our Nations. My first poetry collection, This Is Not a Frank Ocean Cover Album, was the winner of the 2018 Black River Chapbook Competition and my second, Piñata Theory, was awarded the 2018 Hudson Prize. They are both available with Black Lawrence Press. Currently, I'm working as an adjunct professor at the University of San Francisco, managing an online basketball blog, HeadFake, moonlighting as a contributing writer at KQED and SFGATE, and just asking questions wherever I go.

Shout out my Oakland School for the Arts students who drew portraits of me so I don't ever need to take an author photo.

You can see what I'm currently thinking about here.

_________________________-

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Courtney and Chris sit down with Hannah Cohen, author of Year of the Scapegoat (coming Spring of '22 from Glass Poetry), to talk about passions, process, pitfalls, and poetry!

Hannah Cohen resides in Virginia with her two cats. She's a graduate of the Queens University of Charlotte MFA program. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks: YEAR OF THE SCAPEGOAT (Glass Poetry Press, 2022) and BAD ANATOMY (2018). Hannah is one of the co-editors of the online literary journal Cotton Xenomorph. Publications include Qu Lit Mag, The Offing, The Rumpus, Cherry Tree, Entropy, Drunk Monkeys, Glass: A Journal of Poetry and others. She was a Best of the Net 2018 finalist and a Pushcart Prize nominee. She previously served as contributing editor for Platypus Press.

She is currently writing too many things: a novel, an essay collection, and 45000 Microsoft Word half-poems all with file names like "blurgh.docx"

Chris sits down with Patrick Roche, author of A Socially Acceptable Breakdown (Button Poetry), for a one-on-one conversation about passions, process, pitfalls, and poetry! 

Patrick Roche (he/him) is an award-winning poet, performer, mental health advocate, and Carly Rae Jepsen enthusiast from New Jersey. Videos of Patrick’s work have amassed over 9.5 million views on YouTube, making him one of the most popular spoken word poets. Patrick has competed or been featured at multiple national and international competitions and festivals, including placing 3rd in the world at the 2016 Individual World Poetry Slam, 2nd  at the 2017 Capturing Fire national queer slam, 9th at the 2017 National Poetry Slam as part of the Bowery Slam Team, and 3rd at the 2014 College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational (CUPSI, the national collegiate slam) representing Princeton University. Patrick serves nationally as an ambassador for the JED Foundation, promoting mental and emotional health, suicide prevention, and substance abuse awareness.

In recognition of his work as a touring speaker and performer, Patrick was named the 2020 Spoken Word Artist of the Year by APCA (the Association for the Promotion of Campus Activities), and he has featured at numerous conferences and conventions including the national conferences for both APCA and NACA (the National Association for Campus Activities).

His solo stage show debuted in 2020 and was featured on BroadwayWorld. It was then selected for Dixon Place’s HOT! Festival, the longest-running festival of its kind celebrating LGBTQ theater and art.

Patrick is the author of the full-length poetry collection, A Socially Acceptable Breakdown (Button Poetry, 2021). He has also written two chapbooks: Wait 30 Minutes (self-published, 2015) and An Exercise in Necromancy, winner of Bowery Poetry Club’s inaugural chapbook competition (Bowery Poetry/The Operating System, 2017). His work has appeared in or been published by Button Poetry, UpWorthy, Buzzfeed, The Huffington Post, NBC LX, MSN, Beech Street Review, Gal Pals Present, Freezeray Press, Voicemail Poems, and his mom’s fridge. He has shared stages with Darryl “DMC” McDaniels of RUN DMC, Pitch Perfect star Brittany Snow, Everybody Hates Chris and The Walking Dead star Tyler James Williams, and Olympic Gold Medalist Chamique Holdsclaw, among others. His work explores mental health, grief, sexuality, body image, disordered eating, family, memory, love, joy, pop culture, and everything in between. Patrick is a 2014 graduate of Princeton University, where he studied Classics (specifically Latin and Greek poetry) and Education. He loves his dog very much.

Chris and Courtney sit down with Ashley Elizabeth, author of You Were Supposed to be a Friend (Nightengale & Sparrow), for a conversation about passions, process, pitfalls, and poetry! 

Ashley Elizabeth (she/her) is a writing consultant, teacher, and poet. Her works have appeared in SWWIM, Rigorous, and Kahini Quarterly, among others. Her chapbook, you were supposed to be a friend, is available from Nightingale & Sparrow. When Ashley isn’t serving as assistant editor at Sundress Publications or working as a member of the Estuary Collective, she habitually posts on Twitter and Instagram (@ae_thepoet). She lives in Baltimore, MD with her partner and their cat.

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Chris sits down for a one-on-one conversation with Taylor Byas, author of Bloodwarm (Variant Lit), for a conversation about passions, process, pitfalls, and poetry!

Taylor Byas is a Black poet and essayist. Originally from Chicago, she moved to Alabama for six years, where she received both her Bachelor’s degree in English and her Master’s degree in English (Creative Writing concentration) from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Taylor currently lives in Cincinnati, Ohio where she is a third year PhD student and Albert C. Yates Scholar at the University of Cincinnati studying poetry. She is also an Assistant Features Editor for The Rumpus.

She has received five Pushcart and six Best of the Net nominations, and has won a Best Microfiction Award. She is also the 1st Place Winner of the 2020 Poetry Super Highway Contest, the 2020 Frontier Poetry Award for New Poets, the 2021 Adrienne Rich Poetry Award, a finalist for the 2020 Frontier OPEN Prize, and an Honorable Mention for the 2021 Ninth Letter Literary Award in Poetry.

Her chapbook, BLOODWARM, is out now from Variant Lit (2021). Her debut full-length poetry collection, I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times, is forthcoming from Soft Skull Press in the Spring of 2023.

She is represented by Rena Rossner of The Deborah Harris Agency. 

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Join Courtney and Chris Margolin for a sit down with DeMisty D. Bellinger, author of Peculiar Heritage (Mason Jar Press), for a conversation about passions, process, pitfalls, and poetry!

DeMisty D. Bellinger is the author of the poetry collections Rubbing Elbows (Finishing Line Press, 2017) and Peculiar Heritage (Mason Jar Press, 2021), and the forthcoming novel New to Liberty (Unnamed Press, 2022). A graduate of the MFA program at Southampton College and the PhD program at the University of Nebraska, DeMisty is now poetry editor with Porcupine Literary and with Malarkey Books, and she teaches creative writing at Fitchburg State University in Massachusetts. You can find her online at demistybellinger.com.

Chris sits down for a one-on-one conversation with Jose Hernandez Diaz on passions, process, pitfalls, and poetry! 

Jose Hernandez Diaz is a 2017 NEA Poetry Fellow. He is the author of a collection of prose poems: The Fire Eater (Texas Review Press, 2020). He holds degrees in English and Creative Writing from UC Berkeley and Antioch University Los Angeles. His work appears in The American Poetry Review, Cincinnati Review, Georgia Review, Huizache, Iowa Review, The Nation, Poetry, and in The Best American Nonrequired Reading. Currently, he is an Editor for Frontier and Palette Poetry.

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Courtney & Chris Margolin sit down with Rita Mookerjee of Honey Literary to discuss all things passions, process, pitfalls, and poetry! 

Rita Mookerjee is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Women's and Gender Studies Program at Iowa State University. Her research interests include postcolonial women's literature, food studies, and queer theory. She holds a PhD in Literature from Florida State University. In 2019-2020, she was a Fulbright Fellow to Jamaica.

Her critical work has been featured in the Routledge Companion of Literature and Food, the Bloomsbury Handbook to Literary and Cultural Theory, and the Bloomsbury Handbook of Twenty-First Century Feminist Theory. Her poetry is featured in Juked, Aaduna, New Orleans Review, Sinister Wisdom, and the Baltimore Review. She is the author of the chapbook Becoming the Bronze Idol (Bone & Ink Press, 2019). Currently, Rita is the Assistant Poetry Editor of Split Lip Magazine and a poetry staff reader for [PANK]. She is the Poetry Editor and Sex, Kink, and the Erotic Editor for Honey Literary.

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Chris Margolin sits down one-on-one with Ariana Brown for a conversation about passions, process, pitfalls, and poetry! 

ARIANA BROWN is a Black Mexican American poet with ten years of experience writing, performing, and teaching poetry. She offers a list of services for college events, poetry slams, and local organizations. Her work focuses on Black relationality, queer kinship, and imagining a world where Black girls are free. She is currently on tour with Alan Pelaez Lopez as part of the We Are Owed. Tour in fall 2021. Click here to book Ariana for an artist talk, writing workshop, or poetry performance.

**Please excuse any audio issues on this episode, we were trying a different setup for it, and it didn't work as well as we wanted. 

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