“I imagined how I would feel if I were abused by a man who happened to be powerful. How I would feel if people continued buying his work, feeding his power, and insisting it had nothing to do with me.”
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“The responsibility for everyone—but specifically for white people—in this time is to earnestly confront and hold ourselves accountable for our internalized racism as well as perpetually engage with anti-racist education.”
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Book Review
“Throughout Conjure Women’s five parts, Atakora transports readers throughout the women’s lives before and after the Civil War, offering portraits of both the mundane and otherworldly, the joyful and heart-wrenching.” On the blog, Noreen Ocampo reviews Afia Atakora’s Conjure Women (Random House, 2020).
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Q&A
One of my first classes that I started taking at KU was Psychology of Music and we had a debate: what is music? And there was no answer. The art that I create, which is applicable, I think is still art, even though it’s science-based and research based I think it is still art.
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Meet the Mentor | CAC ‘20
“I make art by writing poetry because I realized at a young age that writing my thoughts/feelings down helped me process my fears and worries, even my hopes. Writing also helped me positively guide my creativity and imagination.“
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Meet the Mentor | CAC ‘20
“Writing teaches me to be empathetic, to ask the right questions, and to never be satisfied until I reach a new and burning truth. The other reason I write is because I love telling stories and connecting with people over shared experiences.“
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Meet the Mentor | CAC ‘20
“When I’m solely focused on painting or sketching, my mind isn’t distracted by meaningless thought cycles. I’m utterly in the moment, giving myself entirely to whatever piece I’m working on. And it’s thrilling when I can capture the human essence with some ink lines and messy splashes of watercolor.”
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Q&A
“Poems are usually beautiful objects, either by sound or image. But writing about everything that had hurt me, that was very hard – and giving it little houses to live in has made it so much more bearable.”
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Meet the Mentor | CAC ‘20
“For me, art is about connection, interaction, and shared experience. this is why I’ve centered most of my life so far around ensemble music: it relies on the investment of several individuals who all care deeply about creation.“
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Meet the Mentor | CAC ‘20
“Ideas, passion, originality...all are fleeting novelties if you cannot organize, plan, and implement into action nor if you cannot recognize your relationship to the past, present, and future.”
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Meet the Mentor | CAC ‘20
“Nature is a mother with a knife, ready to pounce on us without warning. Mountains collapse, rivers reclaim, skies open up and caves swallow. But there is also a beauty in this destruction. The landscapes of my mind reach out for other minds in beautiful acts of aggression.”
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Book Review
“Say Mother, Say Hand, is not quite an anti-memoir, but it’s not a traditional memoir, either. It is a visually alive, painful deconstructed recollection of Conlan’s life and the lives of her mother and grandmother… it explores her legacy of deeply flawed women who were, themselves, learning how to survive in a world that often seemed out to punish them.” Sophie Allen and Sarah Feng review Marie Conlan’s Say Mother, Say Hand (Half-Mystic Press, 2020).
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Meet the Mentor | CAC ‘20
“I have been making music for over 7 years now. I decided to try my hand at making music after I first discovered Nujabes, who has been one of the most significant influences in both my music and personal life.“
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7 Poems for Grief
“I return to these poems in times of grief because seldom do you find poetry that so explicitly demands the reader consider body / mind dualism.”
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Book Review
“Above all else, Frying Plantain is a coming-of-age story in which Reid-Benta carefully unfolds an abundance of themes, such as growth, connection, belonging and the lack thereof, that will undoubtedly hit home for readers of all backgrounds.” On the blog, Noreen Ocampo reviews Zalika Reid-Benta’s Frying Plantain (House of Anansi Press, 2019).
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Congratulations to Khaty Xiong, whose poem in Issue 4 has been selected for inclusion in Best of the Net 2019!
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APA Writer Series | Iris A. Law
“I think there’s just a need out there for poetry to be introduced earlier in classrooms, and for it to be something that’s just part of the way we live and breathe…And the earlier and more broadly we expose people to multiple voices and different kinds of poetry, I do think it’s possible to change the system.”
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A Meditation on Grief
“Everybody is wrong about grief, and I’m right, and let me tell you why. Grief is easy. It’s limbic, glandular. Unfortunately, people can’t seem to help themselves from complicating.”
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Book Review
“Flynn effectively encourages sympathy for all of her characters, leaving the reader both in awe and horror at the history she writes—the history that feels more emotional than artificial, more lifelike than fiction.” On the blog, Noreen Ocampo reviews Katie Flynn’s The Companions (Scout/Gallery Press, 2020).
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Q&A | Arts Collective
“I identify as a lyric poet, so I really look to music to maintain a level of lyricism in my work. My poetry, I think, is very bodily. It’s concerned about the body, and the body’s relationship with the world – and I think that dance gets at that very naturally.” An interview with poet Peter LaBerge.
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