Oh hey, we found your TO DO list: 1) Travel to the colony of world travelers. 2) Code-switch. 3) Get vulnerable and fluctuate. 4) Come to our wild reading with some of our favorite emerging poets: Jenny Zhang, Wendy Xu, Monica Mody, and Monica McClure. Rookie contributor Jenny Zhang–possibly the poet most mentioned when we get internship and job applications–is “a 21st century Whitman, only female, Chinese, and profoundly scatological” (Elizabeth Robinson). Ruth Lilly Fellow Wendy Xu–whose You Are Not Dead (Cleveland State University Poetry Center 2013) was one of Poets & Writers’ picks for top poetry debuts–“plunder[s] through our lives, collecting the oddest and most significant things, turning our thoughts toward things we couldn’t have known before she turned us toward them” (Dara Wier). Take a dive in the black waters of Monica Mody’s shamanic-futuristic Kala Pani (1913 press 2013), the best bonkers, ritualistic-bureaucratic, anti-imperial, terraforming poetry book ever written about lentils. Latina gurlesque poet Monica McClure’s new book Tender Data (Birds LLC 2014) offers a hash-tagged, slippery, code-switching take on gender-making, class warfare, and vexed relationships–that’s 100% chiflada.
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Monica McClure’s debut poetry collection Tender Data (Birds LLC) comes out in the spring. The curator of the Atlas Reading Series, she also wrote the chapbooks Mood Swing (Snacks Press 2013) and Mala (Poor Claudia) and co-edited with Brenda Shaughnessy the anthology Both and Neither: Biracial American Writers. Read an interview with her here.
Monica Mody’s first book, KALA PANI, just came out from 1913 Press. Bhanu Kapil calls her “a poet of sacrifice” who writes “to us from the space behind the sun.” Monica has worked with Breakthrough, the global human rights organization, on their program areas, as well as with the Centre for Feminist Legal Research as a film festival coordinator. Her engagement with social justice and feminist/queer issues draws on her citizen/alien selves as much as on her evolving ideas of spiritual participation. Through 2007-08, Monica curated Open Baithak, a multilingual poetry in performance series in Delhi. Check out her conversation with Cathy Linh Che here.
Wendy Xu is the author of You Are Not Dead (Cleveland State University Poetry Center 2013), which was profiled by Poets & Writers Magazine as one of the year’s best debut books. A Ruth Lilly Fellow, she is the co-editor and publisher of iO: A Journal of New American Poetry / iO Books, and former curator of the jubilat / Jones reading series. Here she is at the poetry foundation.
Jenny Zhang could be the poet most mentioned as their favorite when we get internship applications. Her poetry collection Dear Jenny, We Are All Find (Octopus Books, 2012) has become a sort of classic. Hear her talk about how she became a ghoul here! She’s a regular contributor to Rookie, curates Stain of Poetry, a monthly reading series in Bushwick.
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