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Rogers, Kenyatta 2014; 2023

Wednesday, October 15, 2014
with Hannah Gamble
Chicago Cultural Center
Wednesday, October 18, 2023
Blue Hour Reading Series with Kenyatta Rogers and Marcy Rae Henry
Haymarket House

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I had a dream
that I read a poem
to a woman
and cried
at how beautiful
it was

and she cried
at how beautiful
that was
and I thought
how even my
thoughts are
a problem.

– Kenyatta Rogers, “The Most Beautifullest Thing”

Continue reading this poem⇒

Watch Kenyatta Rogers’ 2023 reading with Marcy Rae Henry at the Chicago Poetry Center:

Kenyatta Rogers begins at 19:28 minutes.

I never missed that $60,
I could spend it easily.
I can take the stairs,
I have fingers and can use buttons.
Before lightning there should be thunder
and if there’s not, it’s still ok.

– Kenyatta Rogers, “Bruce Banner #3”

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Listen to Kenyatta Rogers, with Hannah Gamble, read for the Poetry Center of Chicago’s Six Points Reading Series:

Listen to Kenyatta Rogers read “Carpet Bomb”:

More info on Kenyatta Rogers⇒

Queeney, Maggie 2016; 2023

Wednesday, September 14, 2016
with Toby Altman
City Lit Books
Wednesday, August 16, 2023
Blue Hour Reading Series with Maggie Queeney and Brittany Rogers
Haymarket House

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laurel tree, limbs bent and twined into crown heifer     bank of marsh reeds,
handful lashed into pipes, song in another breath     a clutch of conifers, weeping

– Maggie Queeney, “Metamorphosis: The Female Into”

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Watch Maggie Queeney’s 2023 reading with Brittany Rogers at the Chicago Poetry Center:

Maggie Queeney begins at 21:50 minutes.

more than the men, even. The ones who looked
like I looked. Who called my name in a voice
I could not identify from my own on recordings.

– Maggie Queeney, “The Women”

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Listen to Maggie Queeney’s interview on the Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast:

Visit Maggie Queeney’s website⇒

Mascarenhas, Jessica 2019

Friday, September 20, 2019
Six Points Reading Series with Jessica Mascarenhas and Rosie Accola
Space Oddities in Humboldt Park

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Read Gertrude aka Jessica Mascarenhas’ feature on Lake Shore Dive bar:

Spotlight On: Gertrude aka Jessica Mascarenhas, poet and comedian

Poet and comedian Gertrude (Jessica Mascarenhas) will pull on your heartstrings with beautiful prose tangled in rich metaphors and vulnerability, then splash you with a cold dose of punchy wit and honesty. Laughter is her love language and something she seeks human connection with. Her work is funny, fresh, and smart.

Watch Jessica Mascarenhas read her poetry:

Commencement 2020 – Poetry Winner Jessica Mascarenhas from Columbia College Chicago on Vimeo.

Read Gertrude aka Jessica Mascarenhas’ interview with Voyage Chicago:

Check out Jessica (aka Gertrude) Mascarenhas’s Artwork

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jessica (aka Gertrude) Mascarenhas. Jessica, we’d love to hear your story and how you got to where you are today both personally and as an artist. For me, poetry was a side effect. It was a response to growing up in an abusive environment because although I love […]

More info on Jessica Mascarenhas⇒

Accola, Rosie 2019

Friday, September 20, 2019
Six Points Reading Series with Jessica Mascarenhas and Rosie Accola
Space Oddities in Humboldt Park

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I haven’t been sleeping
though I was taught to dream
of leering men cached in alleys.
I am no longer afraid of them.
When I do sleep,
my fists are clenched.
Sleep is the absence of vigilance;

– Rosie Accola, “My mom never let me go to warped tour”

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Purchase Rosie Accola’s book Referential Body:

Referential Body – Ghost City Press

Rosie’s work is devastatingly honest, but rife with levity. These poems articulate pain with candor while bravely retaining the space for joy and for humor. Rosie is a poet who is able to capture something very genuine and human, and to communicate it to the page with all its truthful chaos intact.

I think of you whenever I listen to Deathcab,
yr poems make me want to fight for femmes and
beat Bukowski in a bar-room brawl
while running around my parents’ block in winter.

– Rosie Accola, “Sleep”

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Follow Rosie Accola on Twitter⇒

Gamble, Hannah 2014; 2021

Wednesday, October 15, 2014
with Kenyatta Rogers
Chicago Cultural Center
Wednesday, October 20, 2021
Reading Series with Hannah Gamble and Mayda Del Valle
Zoom

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Hello, poet. I read your book again today,
and with Houston finally being
what I want it to be (windy
and piled with the bodies of pumpkins)
I have to say I felt
alone. Alone is a proud
and quiet feeling where I am everything
and everything is a cluster of four pumpkin-colored
leaves on a tree still green in October.

– Hannah Gamble, “Neighborhood Beautification”

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Watch Hannah Gamble’s 2021 reading with Mayda Del Valle at the Chicago Poetry Center:

Hannah Gamble begins at 6:05 minutes.

Read Hannah Gamble’s Interview with Ghost City Press:

Hannah Gamble – Ghost City Press

Hannah Gamble, interviewed by Blake Wallin One of my favorite things about Your Invitation to a Modest Breakfast is how conceptually rich the poems are yet how the reader is forced to find contexts for them at the same time. What were your influences while writing your first bo

Listen to Hannah Gamble, with Kenyatta Rodgers, read for the Poetry Center of Chicago’s Six Points Reading Series:

Hannah Gamble begins reading at 20:42 minutes.

A little ways above the hands
the mouths spoke together
but for two
different reasons,
like the music was behaving
but the orchestra was broken.

– Hannah Gamble, “It Was Alive, Though Differently”

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More info on Hannah Gamble⇒

Mendoza, Jonathan 2019

Friday, November 15, 2019
Six Points Reading Series with Meg Day and Jonathan Mendoza
The Whistler

Watch Jonathan Mendoza perform his poem “For Quiet Boys”:

You ask me for my name,
and I say, “It’s pronounced Mendoza,”
and again, the Spaniard spits it out my throat,
pats me on the tongue,
tells me I have been a good subject,
and again, I have traded this empire
for my former one.

            – Jonathan Mendoza, “Onomástico”

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Watch Jonathan Mendoza perform his poem “Brown Boy, White Boy”:


More info on Jonathan Mendoza⇒

Day, Meg 2019

Friday, November 15, 2019
Six Points Reading Series with Meg Day and Jonathan Mendoza
The Whistler

 

 

I knew I was a god
when you could not
agree on my name
& still, none you spoke
could force me to listen
closer.

            – Meg Day, “Portrait of My Gender as [Inaudible]”

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Watch Meg Day perform her poem “Elegy in Translation”:

Poem-a-Day: “Elegy in Translation” by Meg Day

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In some other life, I can hear you
breathing: a pale sound like running
fingers through tangled hair. I dreamt
again of swimming in the quarry
& surfaced here when you called for me
in a voice only my sleeping self could
know. Now the dapple of the aspen
respires on the wall & the shades cut
its song a staff of light.

– Meg Day, “10 AM is When You Come to Me”

Continue reading this poem⇒

Watch Meg Day in “The future lives in our bodies,” a virtual reading and discussion on poetry and disability justice:

“The future lives in our bodies”: Poetry & Disability Justice | March 13, 2022

No Description

More info on Meg Day⇒

Grass, Camellia-Berry 2019

Saturday, October 12, 2019
Six Points Reading Series with Raych Jackson and Camellia-Berry Grass
The Whistler

 

 

Let’s get to the point, like water does, rushing to fill all the spaces: this is about liquidity. What fills the spaces isn’t whether or not I am your daughter but whether or not I can afford to be your daughter. There are costs involved. The empty spaces are what writing teachers call “place.” It is understood by the writing teachers that place is the bodies of water where you are from. It is understood that a father’s bottle of whiskey is itself a body of water.

            – Camellia-Berry Grass, “Accountability”

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Read Camellia-Berry Grass’s interview with Black Warrior Review.

I am a magician of jackets, I help my wife foster kittens, I’m a transsexual metalhead, and my backyard wrestling character from back in the day was called “Reaper.” But if asked in a physical social setting where I actually have to not scare someone, I say I’m an essayist. I say that I use they/them or she/her pronouns.

            – Camellia-Berry Grass

Drink the water at regular intervals, if possible.
Drink them slowly. Adopt, for the time at least,
rational habits of eating, drinking and exercise.
This will encourage the healing.

– Camellia-Berry Grass, “True or False”

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Follow Camellia-Berry Grass on Twitter⇒

Jackson, Raych 2019

Saturday, October 12, 2019
Six Points Reading Series with Raych Jackson and Camellia-Berry Grass
The Whistler

 

 

he forced me awake by snoring after
commendable I was able to fall asleep
this is his bed now he is rooted I am
snapped hanging on to assault charges by
splinters commendable I was able to fall
asleep maybe it was the best defense

            – Raych Jackson, “pantoum for his snoring”

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Watch Raych Jackson perform her poem “Numbers 16”:

Raych Jackson – Numbers 16

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A black girl is happiest when rooted to the scalp are braids.
She dances with them whipping down her back like corn in winds of harvest.
Braiding forces our reunions to be like the shifts your mothers work, long.
I find that being surrounded by only your own is more useful.
Gives our mixed blood more value.
Solidifies your place with your race, with your sisters.

– Raych Jackson, “A sestina for a black girl who does not know how to braid hair”

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Watch Raych Jackson perform her poem “Jonah Was Trapped Before He Met the Fish”:

Raych Jackson – Jonah Was Trapped Before He Met the Fish

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More info on Raych Jackson⇒

Young, Avery 2019

Thursday, August 29, 2019
Six Points Reading Series with Tara Betts and Avery Young
Chicago Water Taxi (Loop to Chinatown’s Ping Tom Park)

basement smell(t) like a raccoon
chewin on a banana laffy taffy
inside de furnace
cussin mary’s baby
& erything else

              – Avery R. Young, “[out wes(t)]”

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Watch Avery R. Young speak with WGN News about being named Chicago’s Inaugural Poet Laureate:

1. He reminded me of the character Willis Jackson from the TV show Diff’rent Strokes. This prompted me to reimagine a dark narrative of a Willis who would be bullied for having all of blk Harlem caked on him inside his new Manhattan boarding school. In front of a studio audience who wouldn’t laugh.

– Avery R. Young, from “peestain”

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Watch Avery R. Young perform with De Deacon Board here:

More info on Avery R. Young⇒

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