Essentially Poetic: An Essential Voices Monthly Reading Series for Community Building, March 2024
Join FlowerSong Press at our next installment of Essentially Poetic Reading Series on Thursday, March 28, 2024 at 7:00-8:30 PM CST.
Essentially Poetic: An Essential Voices Monthly Reading Series for Community Building is a curation of poets, artists, essayists, novelists, educators, and everyday individuals whose deemed their voice essential, their work necessary, and their compassion for community building contagious and inspiring. This space is free of judgement and hate, and is a space for writers, readers, and admirers to come together to listen and uplift one another in a creative, poetic, and intentional online space.
Essentially Poetic is dedicated to amplifying essential voices throughout our world. By creating an online environment, we can reach beyond geographical borders and barriers. The essential voice echoes loud and translates intuitively. Join us each month as we come together to celebrate featured readers and artists and listen to their poetic and essential voice.
Our March Essentially Poetic Featured Readers:
Tamara Al-Qaisi-Coleman
Tamara Al-Qaisi-Coleman (she/her) is a bi-racial Muslim fiction writer, historian, poet, and artist. Her first book of poetry “The Raven, The Bayou, & The Willow '' is available through FlowerSong Press. She is a Brooklyn Poets Fellow (2020), a Rad(ical) Poetry Fellow (2020), and a poet for the Houston Grand Opera & MFAH’s event “The Art of Intimacy.” (2019) She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and the Best of the Net anthology (2021). Her work can be found in (Art) WORDPEACE and Mixed Magazine, (Fiction) Crack the Spine Literary Magazine, (Poetry) Mizna, and others.
jo reyes-boitel
jo reyes-boitel is a queer, mixed Latinx poet, playwright, and scholar. Completing their MFA at the University of Texas – Rio Grande Valley, jo is a Presidential Research Fellow and teaches undergraduate creative writing courses. jo’s work centers on decoloniality and the role of longing and mourning in reclaiming cultural inheritance and identity. Their publications include Michael + Josephine (FlowerSong Press, 2019), the chapbook mouth (Neon Hemlock, 2021), and her newest work, the matchstick litanies (Next Page Press, 2023). jo has also written and produced “she wears bells”, a hybrid opera, which was a finalist in Guerilla Opera’s 2022 virtual festival. jo is a fellow of Macondo and VoNA/Voices of Our Nations.
Wyatt Welch
Welch grew up on the Interstates after being kidnapped by their father, a troubled veteran of the Vietnam War. They write about their childhood and how it has impacted them and others. Welch questions the boundaries of Self and the State as a theme in their work, while also exploring the body, gay/trans experience, and the fight for presence and safety. The existence of magic and practice of witchcraft are also subjects in their poetry. Welch earned their MA in Linguistics from the University of Florida. Their debut book of poetry, Capitalism Calls Poetry Lazy, was released in 2022 by FlowerSong Press. Welch is currently working on their third book, The Tarot, which is a comprehensive, tarotic poetry collection of the 78 cards.
Brenna Womer
Brenna Womer (she/they) is a queer, childfree, Latine prose writer and poet. She holds an MFA from Northern Michigan University and is the author of Honeypot (Spuyten Duyvil, 2019) and two chapbooks. Her creative writing, craft, and reviews have been published in North American Review, Redivider, The Normal School, Indiana Review, The Pinch, DIAGRAM, and elsewhere. Brenna is a contributing interviewer for SmokeLong Quarterly and has held editorial positions at Moon City Review & Press, Passages North, Story Magazine, and Shenandoah. Her poetry collection, Unbrained, was released in 2023 by FlowerSong Press.
