Archive as Oracle: A Workshop with Kemi Alabi

Kemi Alabi presents a generative, hour-long workshop developed from their work as the Beloit Poetry Journal's inaugural Iron Mouth Curatorial Fellow. Using surrealist poetry games, including Suzanne and Aimé Césaire's "Voice of the Oracle," participants will create new work in conversation with the journal's 75-year archive, exploring the past to clarify the present and reveal the future.

The Iron Mouth Curatorial Fellowship takes its name from a poem Gwendolyn Brooks wrote in response to the work of Robert Frost, published in the Beloit Poetry Journal in the mid 1950s. The Fellowship builds on the BPJ’s decades-long tradition of fostering conversation between poets across time and brings the BPJ's archive -- a treasure trove of powerful, progressive, world-aware poetry since 1950 -- into contemporary dialogue.

Kemi Alabi is the author of Against Heaven (Graywolf Press, 2022), selected by Claudia Rankine as winner of the Academy of American Poets First Book Award. The collection was a Kate Tufts Discovery Award finalist, Chicago Review of Books Award winner, and one of New York Public Library’s Best Books of 2022, among other honors. Alabi’s poems have appeared in The Atlantic, The Nation, Poetry, Boston Review, the Grammy-nominated album Difficult Grace, and elsewhere.

Alabi is co-editor of The Echoing Ida Collection (Feminist Press, 2021), an anthology of Black reproductive justice writing. They've spent over a decade building narrative power for trans and queer bodily autonomy, most recently as Northwestern University's 2024-2025 Feminist in Residence.

Please join us as we celebrate Alabi's outstanding work and the Beloit Poetry Journal's 75th anniversary year!

This event is free and open to the public, but we are grateful for the support of our community. You can contribute to programs like this here. The Beloit Poetry Journal is a wholly independent journal. Even a small donation allows us to continue our mission supporting the next generation of readers and poets. Learn more about the BPJ at www.bpj.org.