Jeremy Michael Reed

Stunned and absolutely thrilled that Nonbinary Bird of Paradise (@uakronpress.bsky.social, 2024) is a finalist for the LGBTQ+ Poetry Lammy (@lambdaliterary.bsky.social)! Congrats to all the finalists in all categories 🏳️‍🌈

I mentioned this to friends recently as one of the few tools I use every semester without fail (for years!) & they didn’t know about it to my surprise so now I’m making sure to spread the word. I truly appreciate @wcaleb.org putting it online for everyone so long ago!

Bird Watching by Eileen Myles: An Archival Collection Support Fonograf Editions in publishing a volume of four early Eileen Myles books, including the never-before-published Bird Watching

I just backed Bird Watching by Eileen Myles: An Archival Collection (!) from @fonografeditions.bsky.social & you probably should too on @kickstarter.com www.kickstarter.com/projects/bir...

me and my book project

Ten authors by whom I've read more than five books:

1. Toni Morrison
2. Joy Harjo
3. C.D. Wright
4. Gabriel García Márquez
5. Marilynne Robinson
6. Virginia Woolf
7. Sandra Cisneros
8. Joe Sacco
9. James Welch
10. Annie Dillard

A black siding with a dozen brightly colored posters wheatpasted on it. The posters are printed with overlapping words in bright colors

A corner of one of the posters next to small cards with typewritten language on them. The cards say, "it can be easy to walk through this shared world for getting that we are all here together. Even forgetting that we are here with all the plants, animals, landforms, ideas, books, music, pictures, etc. All of human imagining is here with us. You are not alone." and "these posters were made by collecting words from our ordinary surroundings (groups of people did that). Then we got to stencils in paper and we used those two screen print the words one on top of another. Some words came from groups in Dublin. Others came from groups in the US. The posters travelled. Our language is shared. Our world is shared, too."

now in Blackpitts in Dublin, if the rain holds off they'll be there a while (you are not alone)

“Overwhelm” “How ridiculous now to think we were happy in the quick shelter / we sought from truth.”

"How ridiculous now to think we were happy in the quick shelter / we sought from truth." - Joy Harjo, "Overwhelm" at @newyorker.com

"From the tawny light
from the rainy nights
from the imagination finding
itself and more than itself
alone and more than alone
at the bottom of the well where the moon lives,
can you pull me ..."

— Denise Levertov

www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42525/...

We're especially seeking more work by Indigenous queer writers outside of the US!

A screenshot of the banner at the top of the Missouri Arts Council website, including a painting by Jeffrey Sippel, Jeremy Reed reading a poem, a textile piece by Heidi Herman, and a photograph of jazz vocalist Eboni Fondren.

I'm honored to be a featured artist at the Missouri Arts Council this month & join the incredible roster of artists they've spotlit over the last five years! You can see the whole 200+ artist archive at missouriartscouncil.org !

Naming For the first month of life, I was

"because its sound

was closest to her love, because two syllables
are an easier loss to bear, because
like all our matriarchs, she wanted me named

for a man none of us could save." - Julia Kolchinsky

poets.org/poem/naming-0

“In a time of destruction, create something.

A poem. A parade. A community. A school. A vow. A moral principle. One peaceful moment.”

-Maxine Hong Kingston
(from the book she wrote from scratch after her home burnt down and she lost all her drafts in the Oakland forest fires of 1991)

Our student project showcase at the end of Book Lab has become quite the event! I was so pleased at the turnout today from the iSchool, Library, & beyond—the FabLab was packed

I’m going to share a few student projects in this thread, so follow or mute as you want or need

May 2025 "He wants simple math. / Breath that outlasts / violence."

New newsletter out this week with shout outs to Julia Kolchinsky & her new book, SLAC sabbaticals, art about Appalachia, & more

Cover for When The Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry edited by Joy Harjo

CEREMONY FOR COMPLETING A POETRY REaDINg This is a give away poem You've come gathering made a circle with me of the places I've wandered I give you the first daffodil opening from earth I've sown I give you warm loaves of bread baked in soft mounds like breasts In this circle I pass each of you a shell from our mother sea Hold it in your spirit Hear the stories she'll tell you I've wrapped your faces around me a warm robe Let me give you ribbonwork leggings dresses sewn with elk teeth moccasins woven with red & sky blue porcupine quills I give you blankets woven of flowers & roots Come closer I have more to give this basket is very large I've stitched it of your kind words Here is a necklace of feathers & bones a sacred meal of chokecherries Take this mask of bark which keeps out the evil ones This basket is only the beginning There is something in my arms for all of you Here I offer this memory of sunrise seen through ice crystals an afternoon of looking into the sea from high rocks Here a red-tailed hawk circles over our heads One of her feathers drops for your hair

May I give you this round stone which holds an ancient spirit This stone will soothe you Within this basket is something you've been looking for all of your life Come take it Take as much as you need I give you seeds of a new way I give you the moon shining on a fire of singing women I give you the sound of our feet dancing I give you the sound of our thoughts flying I give you the sound of peace moving into our faces & sitting down Come This is a give away poem I cannot go home until you have taken everything & the basket which held it When my hands are empty I will be full

Day 6: A poem from Chrystos, a two-spirit, Menominee poet and activist found in anthology of indigenous poetry edited by Joy Harjo

"Come take it Take as much as you need
I give you seeds of a new way"

For info on the meaning of two-spirit, www.teenvogue.com/story/gender...

PRE-ORDER So I Go // Susan Robertson // 2025 — Baseline Press PRE-ORDER poems by SUSAN ROBERTSON April 2025 32 pp., thread bound, 4.75"x 8.5" ISBN # 978-1-998521-03-6 in an edition of 75 numbered copies cover of St. Armand Canal paper flyleaf of Unryu tis...

My Baseline Press chapbook is available for pre-order.

www.baselinepress.ca/shop/so-i-go...

Thanks so much to Poets & Writers for including a little story about us in their newest issue!

Opinion | Kendrick Lamar’s Halftime Show Was Political Art, if You Knew Where to Look With an audience of over 120 million people, the performance broke viewership records. But at times it seemed designed to speak directly to me.

Tiana Clark in the @nytimes.com (!) on Kendrick’s performance, history & the present, & the power & possibility of Black abundance & joy

www.nytimes.com/2025/02/14/o...

The Quiet Room I lived in the quiet room, waiting. I lived across the street, across from my uncle. I lived in the wake of a crash, in a house outside its century, twice over. I lived lonely. I lived crowded. I lived seeking without end. I lived at the time of the heart attack, in the before and the after. I lived next to a fire, in fear of a voice I’d forgotten, a voice I have. I lived in dialogue with silence, far from family but family followed, in the heat of summer, in the cold cold of winter, in the mountains, in the open prairie, at home along the river. I lived in the quiet room because I couldn’t speak another room into existence, into air, the materials and the measure weren’t there.

Thanks to like a field for publishing this experiment with a heart close to the heart of the new poems I’ve been writing.

What an incredible first issue of @asteralesjournal.bsky.social !

River River cannot be contained by the banks we first imagined—

Jeremy's Newsletter A newsletter on writing, reading, teaching, & research

Social media keeps fracturing so I set this up for anyone who wants to stay in touch with me or what I’m working on. First post next week!

jeremymichaelreed.beehiiv.com/subscribe

9th grade teacher helped me enjoy a lot of Shakespeare. 10th had Animal Farm. 11th/12th had stories by Sandra Cisneros I never forgot, W.C. Williams who I loathed then but came to like later, Dickinson, & a teacher who gave me recs at lunch, pushing me toward Garcia Marquez, Ellison, Morrison, etc.

Simple text shows following poem: Spring: Knoxville, TN by Jeremy Michael Reed “The old house on the hill, the one / I think no one lives in, the one / falling apart, filled with moss, / water, possums tracking mud, rotting / floorboards, window frames, fronted by / the long-grassed yard, suddenly changes / when the old-barked tree erupts / into a dogwood’s white petals. // I stop, / breathe in the sweet-sick smell of flowering, / breathe in the pollen that will haunt me, / breathe in the suck of hardbreath dust, asbestos, / breathe in the blooming confusion, buzzing, / breathe in the all of it, the sun.”

I’m so glad this poem found a home in Appalachian Journal under its new editor Jessica Cory and in this issue with such a wonderful tribute to long-time editor Sandra Ballard.

I have known for some time that “fathom” is a unit used to measure depth of water, but I did not until minutes ago that its particular length (six feet) stems from an Old English word—fæthm—meaning the span of a person’s outstretched arms.

I took Spanish for a language requirement and just liked having a class that felt totally different so I kept taking more. It took me to Mexico & Spain, taught me about whole other parts of world history than I’d studied before, and I still use it all the time.

War Leaves Scars on Lebanese Publishing The brief war of bombardment between Israel and Hezbollah this year destroyed millions of books in Lebanon, disrupting a Lebanese production sector that is critical to the book publishing business in ...

The publishing industry in Lebanon is one of the most sophisticated in the Middle East. Although it has been incredibly difficult for #publishers in the past 5 years, it was far worse over the past two months during incessant bombing by Israel: www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/...