"Blessed" is a coming-of-age poem which emerged during a period of introspection after completing my degree in lockdown. This reimagining of a feminine, almost maternal devil, became a way to explore the complexities of womanhood—with all its power, burdens, and secrets. Intertwining childhood relics and sensory detail—baked tarmac, lemon Shake n’ Vac, Parma violets—with a suggested loss of innocence, I sought to capture the disorienting nature of adolescence.
Kaycee Hill on "Blessed" |
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"On Reginald Shepherd's Erotic and Lyric Possibilities"
"In the ’90s, few living gay poets were published outside of queer venues, and if you lived in a rural area before the internet, it was nearly impossible to find their work. In those days of HIV/AIDS before antiretrovirals were more common and effective, in that analog era before algorithms, to open BWR and find Reginald's poems was a literally transformative chance encounter: it made possible the queer life in art I now live."
viaPOETRY FOUNDATION |
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What Sparks Poetry: Mathias Svalina on "Thank You Terror”
"The best description I know of the creative process can be found in Remedios Varo’s 1957 painting The Creation of Birds. In the painting, a figure—either half-owl or a person in an owl-costume—refracts distant starlight through a triangular magnifying glass. The refracted starlight dries birds drawn with a pen emerging from a violin worn around the owl-person’s neck. The birds, as their ink dries, lift off the page & into life." |
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