Whose Body?

An exploration of Poetry & the Body with 8 poets. A collaboration with the Dodge Poetry Program, as part of the National Poetry Coalition's initiative "Where My Dreaming and My Loving Live: Poetry & the Body"

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Joseph has partnered with Dodge Poetry as part of our Whose Body? Project.

Joseph Millar grew up in western Pennsylvania and was educated at Penn State and the Johns Hopkins University, where he earned an MA in poetry writing. He worked as a commercial fisherman and telephone repairman for more than 20 years, and his accessible narrative poems often take working life as a means of engaging themes of class, family, and romantic love. He is the author of several poetry collections, including Blue Rust (2011), Fortune (2007), and Overtime (2001), which was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. He has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Montalvo Arts Center, and Oregon Literary Arts. His poetry has been featured on Garrison Keillor’s National Public Radio program The Writer’s Almanac and won a Pushcart Prize. Millar, who has taught at Pacific University, the University of Oregon, and Oregon State University, lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, with his wife, poet Dorianne Laux. 

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Priscilla has partnered with Dodge Poetry as part of our Whose Body? Project.

PRISCILLA ORR, author of Losing the Horizon and Jugglers & Tides, Hannacroix Creek Books, has published in Southern Poetry Review, Nimrod, and other journals. She has been awarded fellowships from Yaddo and NJ State Arts Council and has three Pushcart Prize nominations. She is a Geraldine R. Dodge poet and an English Professor at Sussex County Community College where she is also the founding director of the Silconas Poetry Center and founding editor of The Stillwater Review.

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Rigoberto has partnered with Dodge Poetry as part of our Whose Body? Project.

Rigoberto González is the author of four books of poetry including Unpeopled Eden, which won the Lambda Literary Award and the Lenore Marshall Prize from the Academy of American Poets. The recipient of Guggenheim, NEA and USA Rolón fellowships, a NYFA grant in poetry, the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, The Poetry Center Book Award, and the Barnes & Noble Writer for Writers Award, he is contributing editor for Poets & Writers Magazine and writes a monthly column for NBC-Latino online. As of 2016, he serves as critic-at-large with the L.A. Times and sits on the Board of Trustees of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP).

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Rachel has partnered with Dodge Poetry as part of our Whose Body? Project.

Rachel Wiley is a performer, poet, feminist, and fat positive activist from Columbus, Ohio. Rachel has represented Columbus at multiple National Poetry Slam Competitions. She has toured nationally performing at slam venues, colleges, and festivals. Her work has appeared on Upworthy, The Huffington Post, The Militant Baker, Everyday Feminism and PBS News Hour. Her first poetry collection, Fat Girl Finishing School, was published in 2014 by Timber Mouse Publishing. Her second collection, Nothing is Okay, is being set to be released by Button Poetry on March 20th, 2018.

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C. has partnered with Dodge Poetry as part of our Whose Body? Project.

C. Bain is a gender liminal writer-performer based in Brooklyn. His writing has appeared in journals and anthologies including PANK, The Rumpus.net, Muzzle Magazine, and the Everyman’s Library collection Villanelles. His poetry collection, Debridement, was a finalist for the 2016 Publishing Triangle Awards. He has an extensive background in slam and performance poetry. His plays have been presented at the Queerly Festival, Pride Fest at the Tank, and as part of Word Made Flesh. He is a member of the Actors Center. His projects work on locating the queer body in history, and also locating history in queer bodies—valorizing and mythologizing queer lives. He is committed to implicating white american queers in white supremacy. He is currently working on a novel set against the Civil War. He works extensively with trauma, embodiment, and sexuality, but he’d rather just dance with you. More information at tiresiasprojekt.com. 

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Aimee has partnered with Dodge Poetry as part of our Whose Body? Project.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil is the author of four books of poetry, most recently, Oceanic (Copper Canyon, 2018). With Ross Gay, she co-authored the chapbook, Lace & Pyrite: Letters from Two Gardens. Her collection of nature essays is forthcoming from Milkweed. Honors include a Pushcart Prize and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. She is poetry editor of Orion magazine and professor of English in The University of Mississippi's MFA program.

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Jericho has partnered with Dodge Poetry as part of our Whose Body? Project.

Jericho Brown is the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award and fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Brown’s first book, Please (New Issues 2008), won the American Book Award. His second book, The New Testament (Copper Canyon 2014), won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and was named one of the best of the year by Library Journal, Coldfront, and the Academy of American Poets. His poems have appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The New Republic, Buzzfeed, and The Pushcart Prize Anthology. He is the director of the Creative Writing Program at Emory University.

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Ada has partnered with Dodge Poetry as part of our Whose Body? Project.

Ada Limón is the author of five books of poetry, including Bright Dead Things, which was named a finalist for the 2015 National Book Award in Poetry, a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, a finalist for the 2016 National Book Critics Circle Award, and one of the Top Ten Poetry Books of the Year by The New York Times. Her other books include Lucky Wreck, This Big Fake World, and Sharks in the Rivers. She serves on the faculty of Queens University of Charlotte Low Residency M.F.A program, and the 24Pearl Street online program for the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center. She also works as a freelance writer in Lexington, Kentucky. Her new collection, The Carrying, will be released by Milkweed Editions in August of 2018. 

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Poetry Coalition: Organizing around Themes of Social Importance

“Where My Dreaming and My Loving Live”

Last year, the National Poetry Coalition launched its first annual programming initiative focused on a theme of social importance. Each organization in the Poetry Coalition presents programs and projects on a central theme. 

This month, the National Poetry Coalition will be launching its next initiative, Where My Dreaming and My Loving Live: Poetry & the Body, taken from a line in the Tracy K. Smith poem "Flores Woman."

The rich, overarching theme of Poetry & the Body lends itself to a multitude of questions, conversations and explorations of what it means to inhabit this earth embodied. Throughout the month of March, poetry organizations around the country will be organizing unique events, programs and publications that address many different issues related to the body, and will be using the hashtags #PoetryCoalition and #MyDreamingMyLoving to share their projects.

As part of this celebration, the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Program is launching the month-long Whose Body? Project. The question Whose Body? is one that arises again and again as we consider the various issues that can be addressed when we consider Poetry & the Body, including body image, body trauma, environment & the body, the marginalized body, the incarcerated body, body politics, healing & the body, the gendered body, the non-gendered body, senses & the body, and many others.

Whose Body? Video Project

Throughout the month of March, Dodge Poetry will feature 8 video posts (two per week), of poets using poetry (their own or others’) to approach the question “Whose Body?” from any perspective they choose. The videos will be posted here on our Tumblr page. The schedule is as follows: 

Week One: Ada Limón and Jericho Brown Week Two: Aimee Nezhukumatathil and C. Bain Week Three: Rachel Wiley and Rigoberto González Week Four: Priscilla Orr and Joseph Millar

We will also be encouraging anyone who wants to engage with the Whose Body? question on social media to respond to these videos and share their own reflections with the hashtag #WhoseBody.

Celebrate With Us

If you love these videos (which we’re pretty sure you will), you won’t want to miss the Whose Body? Celebration and Reclamation event, to be held on March 24th in Princeton, NJ. This event will feature an amazing line-up of poets (including some familiar faces from this video project) in a day of readings and performances as well as small group conversations and writing activities. Register today to come celebrate with us!