Poetry as Prayer: In Celebration of remembering (y)our light

Join AAWW in-person and online for a celebration of poet and teacher, River 瑩瑩 Dandelion's remembering (y)our light. River's debut chapbook asks how we preserve intergenerational memory when the archives hold missing knowledge. In this collection, food lives as a conduit of memory, recipes hold ancestral wisdom, and poems become spells for safety. These poems honor matriarchs and elders who have lived through tumult and demonstrates how poetry can archive history. From Toisan to New York City, River's poems delve into how we cultivate care and safety within ourselves, each other, and in community. These pieces are testament to how we address and mend intergenerational wounds to remember who we and who we came here to be.

Rejoice in this incredible book with a reading by River 瑩瑩 Dandelion, Jasmine Reid, Jimena Lucero, and Taylor Alyson Lewis.

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River 瑩瑩 Dandelion is a practitioner of ancestral medicine through writing poetry, teaching, energy healing, and creating ceremony. As a poet, he writes to connect with the unseen and unspoken so we can feel and heal. A Tin House Resident, Lambda Literary Fellow, and Kundiman Fellow, River is the author of remembering (y)our light, his debut chapbook on honoring matriarchs and ancestors. River's work has been thrice-nominated for Best of the Net and is published in Best New Poets, The Offing, Bellevue Literary Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, The Margins, and elsewhere. He is the winner of the AWP Kurt Brown Prize and was a 2024 Artist-in-Residence at Headlands Center for the Arts. At its core, River's work lives in the intersections of personal transformation towards collective liberation. He attests our stories will not be forgotten. For more, riverdandelion.com.

Jimena Lucero (she/her) is a writer & cultural worker living on Lenape / Canarsie land in Queens.

Jasmine Reid is a twice trans poet of flowers. She is the author of Deus Ex Nigrum, winner of the 2018 Honeysuckle Press Chapbook Contest, selected by Danez Smith. An MFA graduate from Cornell University and recipient of fellowships from Cave Canem, Poets House, and Jack Jones Literary Arts, her work has been published or is forthcoming in The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, Indiana Review, Pinwheel, TriQuarterly, and Washington Square Review, among others. Jasmine was born and raised in Baltimore, MD, and is currently based in Brooklyn, NY, where she is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Pratt Institute.

Taylor Alyson Lewis is a writer and educator based in Philadelphia. He received the 2017 Edith A. Hambie Poetry Prize sponsored by the Academy of American Poets, the 2020 Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing Queer Writer Fellowship in Prose, and the 2023 Lili Elbe Scholarship sponsored by Lambda Literary, where he was a poetry fellow. His work appears in Nat. Brut, Poetry Online, Voicemail Poems, Columbia Journal, and elsewhere.

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ACCESSIBILITY & SAFETY

The event will be live streamed with auto captioning for those who cannot join us in-person. For those joining us in our space, we are located on the 6th floor, there is an elevator that will take you directly to our space. To protect our friends with chemical sensitivities, AAWW is a fragrance-free space. Masks are required for all attendees; if you forget yours, one will be provided for you. We have three commercial grade air purifiers in the space, and a quiet room in the back should you need some space from the crowd. With the current surge of COVID cases, we highly encourage you to take a test at home prior to the event. If you have had COVID or have had known contact with someone who has tested positive for COVID in the 10 days prior to the event, we ask you tune in for the live stream instead. Please reach out to msaleh@aaww.org for additional accessibility requests including ASL interpretation, ADA accessible bathrooms, chairs with added back support, and beyond. This space is for YOU!