Creating Living Archives: On Contemporary Trans Poetics
11:30 am – 1:00 pm
Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall
Lobby Stage
PARKING
https://www.bsomusic.org/visit-joseph-meyerhoff-hall/
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Creating Living Archives is a poetry reading and panel discussion that centers the works of queer and trans-Asian diasporic poets curated by LAWRENCE-MINH BUI DAVIS. Held in a time of major anti-trans legislation and censorship efforts sweeping the country, three trans poets: CHRYSANTHEMUM, NOAH ARHM CHOI, and RIVER 瑩瑩 DANDELION gather to share their work, as well as discuss how they use poetry and the literary arts to document, sustain, and imagine trans futures. They will discuss poetry as possibility. Poet, performance artist, and public historian Chrysanthemum is a recipient of the 2023 Justin Chin Memorial Scholarship from Lambda Literary and a Kundiman fellow. Noah Arhm Choi’s Cut to Bloom, poetry collection won the 2019 Write Bloody Prize. They were nominated for Best of the Net in 2022, shortlisted for the Poetry International Prize, and work as the Director of the Progressive Teaching Institute at a school in New York City. As a practitioner of ancestral medicine through poetry, teaching, energy healing, and creating ceremony, River 瑩瑩 Dandelion is the author of remembering (y)our light. He has performed and presented his work globally from the Dodge Poetry Festival to the University of Havana.
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CHRYSANTHEMUM (she/her) is a poet, a performance artist, and a public historian. Her honors include the 2023 Justin Chin Memorial Scholarship from Lambda Literary; fellowships from Artist Communities Alliance and Kundiman; and a championship with her team at the Rustbelt Regional Poetry Slam and the first-ever FEM Slam. Chrysanthemum was born to Vietnamese parents in Oklahoma City, where she came of age around the NW 39th Street and Asian American enclaves. She now calls Providence, Rhode Island, home.
chrysanthemvm.com
Twitter: @chrysanthemvm_
Instagram: @chrysanthemvm_
NOAH ARHM CHOI is the author of CUT TO BLOOM, the winner of the 2019 Write Bloody Prize. They received an MFA in Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College and their work appears in Adroit, The Rumpus, The Massachusetts Review, and elsewhere. Noah was nominated for Best of the Net in 2022, shortlisted for the Poetry International Prize, and received the 2021 Ellen Conroy Kennedy Poetry Prize, alongside fellowships from Kundiman, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. A Lambda Literary Writer in Schools, they work as the Director of the Progressive Teaching Institute at a school in New York City.
https://noaharhmchoi.com/
Instagram: @noah.arhm.choi
RIVER 瑩瑩 DANDELION is a practitioner of ancestral medicine through writing poetry, teaching, energy healing, and creating ceremony. As a poet, he writes to connect with the unseen and unspoken so we can feel and heal. As a healer, he is a certified energy healing practitioner who helps clients move through transition and transformation. River also facilitates writing workshops, where participants connect with inner and collective power. A Tin House Resident, Lambda Literary Fellow, and Kundiman Fellow, River is the author of remembering (y)our light. His work has been thrice-nominated for Best of the Net and has been published in Best New Poets, The Offing, The Margins, Asian American Journal of Psychology, and elsewhere. He has performed and presented his work globally from the Dodge Poetry Festival to the University of Havana. River loves to swim and does this work for queer and trans ancestors and descendants to come.
riverdandelion.com
Twitter: @rivertransforms
Instagram: @rememberingourlight
LAWRENCE-MINH Bùi DAVIS is a Viet diasporic editor, writer, and troublemaker. Based on the ancestral lands of the Piscataway Nation sometimes also known as Maryland and Washington, DC, he is a co-founding director of The Asian American Literary Review and co-founder of the pop-up Center for Refugee Poetics. (He’s not a refugee, he just gets kicked out a lot.) Sometimes you can see new things by the light of his ADD.
https://linktr.ee/lawrenceminhbuidavis
Instagram: @lawrenceminhbuidavis
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawrence.minh.bui.davis
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CityLit Project and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in partnership with Chesapeake Shakespeare Company present CityLit Festival: Dismantling the Culture of Silence. This celebration of the arts showcases a bevy of leading poets and writers on April 20, 2024. We’re talking fiction, nonfiction, poetry galore, and ways to up the ante on your craft.
Download the CityLit Festival: Dismantling the Culture of Silence flyer.