Showing up in mailboxes and shelves from coast to coast this summer is the JulyAugust double issue of POETRY Magazine — one of the nation’s oldest poetry publications. Editor (and poet) Adrian Matejka, and the team at POETRY, worked so beautifully with me to make this huge dream come true.
As the new year turned I sent a call out to the poets: those who I talk to regularly and those who I hadn’t seen for years or decades. In the midst of nonstop war and genocide, of climate devastation, and general fuckery, I needed to know: how were we getting by? Were we getting by? Could we please step up and show our faces? And the answer was loud and clear. And the answer was, like us, grounded in love.
This new, special folio — UP WE STEP: The Poets of Fire & Ink — is that answer.
Fire & Ink will celebrate its 25th anniversary in 2027 and while its legacy continues to shape contemporary Black queer and trans art and literature, the need for the movement we built and the opportunities it creates is stronger than ever.
Beginning with this folio of poets and poems — 30 in all, 22 of whom make their first appearance in POETRY — plus a bit of history from archivist Steven G Fullwood, Fire & Ink glows itself up as Fire & Inkwell to step up and step out with and for and to Black queer and trans artists and writers across genre, across media, and across borders.
This year we step up, boots strapped tight, to claim and raise each other up as the cultural keys that we are.
Get this issue. Dig in.
Read more about what we’re up to here: https://www.fireandinkwell.org/news