FlowerSong Press Presents Essentially Poetic: A Monthly Reading Series for Community Building, January 2024
Join us for our next installment of Essentially Poetic: An Essential Voices Monthly Reading Series for Community Building on Saturday, January 27, 2024 at 12:00 PM CST / 7:00 PM GMT+1 via Zoom
Essentially Poetic Reading Series 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 January Essentially Poetic Featured Readers:
Jide Badmus
Jide Badmus is an engineer, a poet inspired by beauty and destruction; he believes that things in ruins were once beautiful.
He is the author of several books including Obaluaye (FlowerSong Press, 2022) and What Do I Call My Love for Your Body (Roaring Lion Newcastle, 2022).
Badmus has curated and edited several anthologies, and his poems have appeared in Agbowo, The Muse, Maroko, Kreative Diadem, Jalada Africa, No Tokens, Afrocritik, Black Bough Poetry Anthology and elsewhere.
He is founder of INKspiredng, Poetry Editor for Con-scio Magazine, a mentor in the SprinNG Fellowship, and sits on the board of advisors for Libretto Magazine.
Jide writes from Lagos, Nigeria. He tweets @bardmus
Taofeek Ayeyemi
Taofeek "Aswagaawy" Ayeyemi is a Nigerian lawyer, writer and author of the chapbook Tongueless Secrets (Ethel Press, 2021) and a collection "aubade at night or serenade in the morning" (Flowersong Press, 2021). A BotN and Pushcart Prize Nominee, his works have appeared in CV 2, Lucent Dreaming, Up-the-Staircase Quarterly, FERAL, ARTmosterrific, Banyan Review, Conscio, Porter House Review, the QuillS and elsewhere. He won the 2021 Loft Books Flash Fiction Competition, 2nd Place in 2021 Porter House Review Poetry Contest, and Honorable Mention in 2021 Oku-no-hosomichi Soka Matsubara Haiku Contest and 2020 Stephen A. DiBiase Poetry Prize among others. He is @Aswagaawy on X/Twitter.
Ayokunle Falomo
AYOKUNLE FALOMO is Nigerian, American, and the author of Autobiomythography of (Alice James Books, 2024), AFRICANAMERICAN’T (FlowerSong Press, 2022—finalist for Texas Institute of Letters' Helen C. Smith Memorial Award for Best Book of Poetry), two self-published collections and African, American (New Delta Review, 2019; selected by Selah Saterstrom as the winner of New Delta Review’s 8th annual chapbook contest). A recipient of fellowships from Vermont Studio Center, MacDowell, and the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program, where he obtained his MFA in Creative Writing—Poetry, his work has been anthologized and widely published.
