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# Voices

Essays, Opinions, and Commentary from Writers and Makers

## Sitemaps

- [XML Sitemap](https://bmpvoices.com/sitemap.xml): Contains all public & indexable URLs for this website.

## Posts

- ["A Crown So Cursed" Is a Thrilling Conclusion to the Nightmareverse Trilogy](https://bmpvoices.com/a-crown-so-cursed-is-a-thrilling-conclusion-to-the-nightmareverse-trilogy/) - Latonya Pennington reviews A CROWN SO CURSED, the thrilling conclusion to L. L. McKinney's NIGHTMAREVERSE trilogy
- ["Miles Morales: Suspended" Takes a Powerful Stand against Book Censorship](https://bmpvoices.com/miles-morales-suspended-review/) - Latonya Pennington reviews MILES MORALES: SUSPENDED, which blends narrative, images, and verse to create a compelling superhero story about censorship
- ["If It Makes You Happy" Is a Down-to-Earth Coming-of-Age Summer Vacation](https://bmpvoices.com/if-it-makes-you-happy-is-a-down-to-earth-coming-of-age-summer-vacation/) - Latonya Pennington reviews We Are All So Good at Smiling, a YA novel in verse that blends mental health and magic
- [Poetry Month Spotlight: Rita Mae Reese](https://bmpvoices.com/poetry-month-spotlight-rita-mae-reese/) - Poetry to teach the poet what is unsayable by Rita Mae Reese
- [Poetry Month Spotlight: Anneliese Finke](https://bmpvoices.com/poetry-month-spotlight-anneliese-finke/) - Poetry of rehumanization by Anneliese Fink
- [Poetry Month Spotlight: Mario the Poet](https://bmpvoices.com/poetry-month-spotlight-mario-the-poet/) - Two poems by Mario the Poet
- [NaPoMo2020 Interconnection and Community Contest Winners](https://bmpvoices.com/interconnection-and-community-contest-winner/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”NaPoMo2020 Interconnection and Community Contest Winner” subhead=”Ryan Petteway” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/3d0a5-dreamsofpo-1587051129-31-8.jpg” background_position=”top_center” min_height=”650px” title_text_shadow_style=”preset2″ global_colors_info=”{}”][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”Intro” _builder_version=”4.16″ max_width=”80%” module_alignment=”center” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16.0″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”] April 1 seems a lifetime ago. In this Covid Season (or whatever we’ll
- [Issue 6: Conflict](https://bmpvoices.com/issue-6/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” admin_label=”Ab Terra FF Header” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/hasan-almasi-OwqLxCvoVxI-unsplash-scaled.jpg” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_fullwidth_header header_fullscreen=”on” content_orientation=”bottom” admin_label=”Fullwidth Header” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” subhead_font_size=”26px” subhead_letter_spacing=”6px” background_enable_color=”off” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/ATFF6.png” background_size=”contain” background_layout=”light” text_shadow_style=”preset2″ text_shadow_horizontal_length=”0.22em” global_colors_info=”{}”][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ max_width=”70%” module_alignment=”center” collapsed=”off” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row admin_label=”Ab Terra FF Story Block – Brood of War” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” collapsed=”off” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_image src=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/ron-szalata-dWM4Q-fbD88-unsplash-scaled.jpg” title_text=”ron-szalata-dWM4Q-fbD88-unsplash” align=”center”
- [Poetry Month Spotlight: Katrina Serwe](https://bmpvoices.com/poetry-month-spotlight-katrina-serwe/) - Poemwalking with Katrina Serwe
- [Poetry Month Spotlight: C. Kubasta](https://bmpvoices.com/poetry-month-spotlight-c-kubasta/) - Four poems by C. Kubasta
- [Poetry Month Spotlight: Wendy Vardaman](https://bmpvoices.com/poetry-month-spotlight-wendy-vardaman-2/) - Four poems by Wendy Vardaman
- [Poetry Month Spotlight: Charles Payne](https://bmpvoices.com/poetry-month-spotlight-charles-payne/) - Four video and spoken word poems by Charles Payne
- [Poetry Month Spotlight: P. R. Dyjak](https://bmpvoices.com/poetry-month-spotlight-pr-dyjak/) - "Woman without a Country" and "Fun & Anxiety": two poems by P. R. Dyjak
- [BMP & WFOP Chapbook Contest Winners 2024](https://bmpvoices.com/bmp-wfop-chapbook-contest-winner-2024/) - We announce the winners of the first WFOP and BMP chapbook contest for Wisconsin poets
- [Afro YA Holiday Gift Guide: Black Fantasy Edition](https://bmpvoices.com/afro-ya-holiday-gift-guide-black-fantasy-edition/) - Latonya Pennington recommends six YA fantasy series featuring Black protagonists this holiday season.
- ["Between the Lines" Is a Triumphant Follow Up to Bronx Masquerade](https://bmpvoices.com/between-the-lines-is-a-triumphant-follow-up-to-bronx-masquerade/) - Latonya Pennington reviews BETWEEN THE LINES, a triumphant novel in verse follow-up to Nikki Grimes's beloved BRONX MASQUERADE
- ["Forever Is Now" Is a Strong, Delicate, and Lyrical Reclamation](https://bmpvoices.com/forever-is-now/) - Latonya Pennington reviews FOREVER IS NOW, a complex and masterful YA novel-in-verse with a strong cast of supporting characters
- [Poetry Month Spotlight: Debra Hall](https://bmpvoices.com/poetry-month-spotlight-debra-hall/) - Poetry by Debra Hall
- [Poetry Month Reprise: Sujash Purna](https://bmpvoices.com/poetry-month-reprise-sujash-purna/) - Poetry by Sujash Purna
- [Poetry Month Reprise: Brittany Adames](https://bmpvoices.com/poetry-month-reprise-brittany-adames/) - Poetry by Brittany Adames
- [Poetry Month Spotlight: Esteban Colon](https://bmpvoices.com/poetry-month-spotlight-esteban-colon/) - Poetry by Esteban Colon
- [National Poetry Month Contest Winners 2018](https://bmpvoices.com/poetry-month-contest-winners-2018/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”National Poetry Month Contest Winners” subhead=”Brittany Adames and Alex Stolis” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” subhead_font_size=”22px” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/3d0a5-dreamsofpo-1587051129-31-8.jpg” background_position=”top_center” min_height=”650px” title_text_shadow_style=”preset2″ global_colors_info=”{}”][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” background_color=”#1c393d” module_alignment=”center” custom_padding=”|20%||20%|false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.24.2″ _module_preset=”default” background_layout=”dark” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″] Thank you poets – thank you for sharing your words, your
- [Poetry Month Spotlight: Angela Williamson Emmert](https://bmpvoices.com/poetry-month-spotlight-angela-williamson-emmert/) - Poetry by Angela Williamson Emmert
- ["A Phoenix First Must Burn" Has Fiery Passion and Imagination](https://bmpvoices.com/a-phoenix-first-must-burn-has-fiery-passion-and-imagination/) - Latonya Pennington reviews A PHOENIX FIRST MUST BURN, a fascinating, fiery anthology of sci-fi fantasy short stories by Black authors
- [My 2024 Black YA TBR](https://bmpvoices.com/my-2024-black-ya-tbr/) - Latonya Pennington talks about the books they're most looking forward to reading in 2024.
- [The 2023 Black YA Holiday Gift Guide](https://bmpvoices.com/black-ya-holiday-gift-guide-2023/) - Latonya Pennington recommends the best books to buy for Black readers this holiday season.
- [Essential Summer Vacation Reads by Black Authors](https://bmpvoices.com/essential-summer-vacation-reads-by-black-authors/) - Latonya Pennington gives us a list of excellent summer YA reads by Black authors
- ["Cool, Awkward, Black" Showcases Passion, Joy, and Resilience for Every "Blerd"](https://bmpvoices.com/cool-awkward-black-review/) - Latonya Pennington reviews We Are All So Good at Smiling, a YA novel in verse that blends mental health and magic
- [National Poetry Month Contest Winners 2023](https://bmpvoices.com/national-poetry-month-contest-winners-2023/) - We announce our National Poetry Month contest winner & short list, along with week 4 editors' pick
- [Eintou and Atari: In Conversation](https://bmpvoices.com/eintou-and-atari/) - Jennifer Morales introduces the "atari," a poetic form in conversation with eintou, and shares two examples
- [Editors' Pick Week 3: Poetry Cycle by Victoria Gransee](https://bmpvoices.com/editors-pick-week-3-poetry-cycle-by-victoria-gransee/) - Our editors' poetry cycle selection for week 3 is an untitled poetry cycle by Victoria Gransee
- [Editors' Pick Week 2: 'Daughter of Our People' Cycle by Sandi K. Johnson](https://bmpvoices.com/editors-pick-week-2-daughter-of-our-people-cycle-by-sandi-k-johnson/) - Our editors' poetry cycle selection for week 2 is "Daughter of Our People" by Sandi K. Johnson
- [Poetry Month Spotlight: Amanda Reavey](https://bmpvoices.com/poetry-month-spotlight-amanda-reavey/) - Poetry by Amanda Reavey
- [National Poetry Month Spotlight: An Introduction to Novels in Verse](https://bmpvoices.com/novels-in-verse/) - For National Poetry Month, Latonya Pennington offers an introduction to novels in verse & recommends several poetic middle grade and YA novels featuring Black protagonists.
- [Poetry Month Spotlight: Mauricio Kilwein Guevara](https://bmpvoices.com/poetry-month-spotlight-mauricio-kilwein-guevara/) - Three poems on change and impermanence
- [Poetry Month Spotlight: Wendy Vardaman](https://bmpvoices.com/poetry-month-spotlight-wendy-vardaman/) - Three poems on change and impermanence
- ["We Are All So Good at Smiling" Shows That Depression Doesn't Have To Kill Your Magic](https://bmpvoices.com/we-are-all-so-good-at-smiling-shows-that-depression-doesnt-have-to-kill-your-magic/) - Latonya Pennington reviews We Are All So Good at Smiling, a YA novel in verse that blends mental health and magic
- [Most Anticipated 2023 Reads](https://bmpvoices.com/most-anticipated-2023-reads/) - Latonya Pennington talks about the books she's most looking forward to reading in 2023.
- [Best Books to Give Black Readers This Holiday Season, 2022](https://bmpvoices.com/best-books-to-give-black-readers-this-holiday-season-2022-2/) - Latonya Pennington recommends the best books to buy for Black readers this holiday season.
- [Best Books to Give Black Readers This Holiday Season, 2021](https://bmpvoices.com/best-books-to-give-black-readers-this-holiday-season-2022/) - Latonya Pennington recommends the best books to buy for Black readers this holiday season.
- [Editors' Picks Week 3: Poetry by Skylar Brown and Kathleen Hellen](https://bmpvoices.com/editors-picks-week-3-poetry-by-skylar-brown-and-kathleen-hellen/) - Our editors' space/place selections, week 3, include poetry by Skylar Brown and Kathleen Hellen.
- ["Girl Vs the World" Shows a Black Autistic Girl Surviving and Thriving](https://bmpvoices.com/girl-vs-the-world-review/) - Latonya Pennington reviews Girl Vs the World, a YA novel that shows a Black autistic girl surviving and thriving
- [It All Belongs to You: A Review of R. B. Simon’s <em>The Good Truth</em>](https://bmpvoices.com/it-all-belongs-to-you/) - C. Kubasta reviews R. B. Simon's THE GOOD TRUTH
- ["The Sound of Stars" Shows the Power of Art in Dark Times](https://bmpvoices.com/the-sound-of-stars-review/) - Latonya Pennington reviews The Sound of Stars, a postapocalyptic YA novel that emphasizes the power of art in dark times
- ["Mental Health High" Is a Complicated Read with a Messy Protagonist](https://bmpvoices.com/mental-health-high/) - Latonya Pennington reviews Mental Health High, a YA novel in verse that blends urban fantasy with a complex depiction of the protagonist's mental health issues
- ["Right Where I Left You" Is Geeky Queer Bliss](https://bmpvoices.com/right-where-i-left-you-is-geeky-queer-bliss/) - Latonya Pennington reviews Right Where I Left You, a YA novel about complex relationships and queer identity with a Black adolescent protagonist
- [Then Became](https://bmpvoices.com/then-became/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”Then Became” subhead=”Cynthia Hogue” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” subhead_font_size=”22px” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/3d0a5-dreamsofpo-1587051129-31-8.jpg” background_position=”top_center” min_height=”650px” hover_enabled=”0″ title_text_shadow_style=”preset2″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16.0″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”] Then Became for Sylvain © Cynthia Hogue, 2014. Originally published in TAB: a
- [Ancient Astronaut](https://bmpvoices.com/ancient-astronaut/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”Ancient Astronaut” subhead=”Greg Allendorf” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/3d0a5-dreamsofpo-1587051129-31-8.jpg” background_position=”top_center” min_height=”650px” hover_enabled=”0″ title_text_shadow_style=”preset2″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” subhead_font_size=”22px” sticky_enabled=”0″][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16.0″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″] Everybody needs a beloved. Somelook beyond and above. My baby died in my
- [Widow](https://bmpvoices.com/widow/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”Poetry Month Spotlight” subhead=”Sonya Vatomsky” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/3d0a5-dreamsofpo-1587051129-31-8.jpg” background_position=”top_center” min_height=”650px” hover_enabled=”0″ title_text_shadow_style=”preset2″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” subhead_font_size=”22px” sticky_enabled=”0″][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16.0″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″] They didn’t tell me where the funeral was so I know it’s
- [Lullaby](https://bmpvoices.com/lullaby/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”Lullaby” subhead=”Kate Asche” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/3d0a5-dreamsofpo-1587051129-31-8.jpg” background_position=”top_center” min_height=”650px” hover_enabled=”0″ title_text_shadow_style=”preset2″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” subhead_font_size=”22px” sticky_enabled=”0″][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16.0″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″] Find yourself alone in someone else’s house, nine thousand feet above your actual life,
- [Dixie Highway](https://bmpvoices.com/dixie-highway/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”Dixie Highway” subhead=”Nickole Brown” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/3d0a5-dreamsofpo-1587051129-31-8.jpg” background_position=”top_center” min_height=”650px” hover_enabled=”0″ title_text_shadow_style=”preset2″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” subhead_font_size=”22px” sticky_enabled=”0″][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16.0″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″] [/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_row column_structure=”2_3,1_3″ admin_label=”Row” _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” border_radii=”on|5px|5px|5px|5px” border_width_all=”1px”
- [the bull–the line–europa](https://bmpvoices.com/the-bull-the-line-europa/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”the bull–the line–europa” subhead=”Wendy Vardaman” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/3d0a5-dreamsofpo-1587051129-31-8.jpg” background_position=”top_center” min_height=”650px” hover_enabled=”0″ title_text_shadow_style=”preset2″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” subhead_font_size=”22px” sticky_enabled=”0″][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16.0″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″] [/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_row column_structure=”2_3,1_3″ admin_label=”Row” _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” border_radii=”on|5px|5px|5px|5px” border_width_all=”1px”
- [Stepmother en Filipinas, circa 1948](https://bmpvoices.com/stepmother-en-filipinas-circa-1948/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”Stepmother en Filipinas, circa 1948″ subhead=”Victoria G. Smith” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/3d0a5-dreamsofpo-1587051129-31-8.jpg” background_position=”top_center” min_height=”650px” hover_enabled=”0″ title_text_shadow_style=”preset2″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″ subhead_font_size=”22px”][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16.0″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″] Stepmother en Filipinas, ca. 1948 I.Long before the clop-clopping
- [Constructing ‘a Plausible Protagonist’](https://bmpvoices.com/constructing-a-plausible-protagonist/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”Constructing ‘a Plausible Protagonist'” subhead=”C. Kubasta” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/3d0a5-dreamsofpo-1587051129-31-8.jpg” background_position=”top_center” min_height=”650px” hover_enabled=”0″ title_text_shadow_style=”preset2″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″ subhead_font_size=”22px”][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16.0″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″] Constructing ‘a Plausible Protagonist’ Riding home double, atop the handlebars, a
- [Wrappers](https://bmpvoices.com/wrappers/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”Wrappers” subhead=”Cathryn Cofell” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/3d0a5-dreamsofpo-1587051129-31-8.jpg” background_position=”top_center” min_height=”650px” hover_enabled=”0″ title_text_shadow_style=”preset2″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” subhead_font_size=”22px” sticky_enabled=”0″][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16.0″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″] Wrappers You’re twelve and in love with the boy next dooronly you don’t quite
- [Visionary](https://bmpvoices.com/visionary/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”Visionary” subhead=”Nicole Cooley” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” subhead_font_size=”22px” subhead_line_height=”2.9em” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/3d0a5-dreamsofpo-1587051129-31-8.jpg” background_position=”top_center” min_height=”650px” title_text_shadow_style=”preset2″ global_colors_info=”{}”][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16.0″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″] Visionary The American Museum of Visionary Art On the side of Key
- [2016 Editors’ Choice Poems: Week 1](https://bmpvoices.com/2016-editors-choice-poems-week-1/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”2016 Editors’ Choice Poems: Week 1″ _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/3d0a5-dreamsofpo-1587051129-31-8.jpg” background_position=”top_center” min_height=”650px” hover_enabled=”0″ title_text_shadow_style=”preset2″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16.0″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″] We are delighted to present this week’s selections from the Brain Mill
- [2016 Editors’ Choice Poems: Week 3](https://bmpvoices.com/2016-editors-choice-poems-week-3/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”2016 Editors’ Choice Poems: Week 3″ _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/3d0a5-dreamsofpo-1587051129-31-8.jpg” background_position=”top_center” min_height=”650px” title_text_shadow_style=”preset2″ global_colors_info=”{}”][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16.0″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″] We are delighted to present this week’s selections from the Brain Mill Press 2016 Poetry Month
- [When the body is a cage](https://bmpvoices.com/when-the-body-is-a-cage/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”When the body is a cage” subhead=”Julie Brooks Barbour” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/3d0a5-dreamsofpo-1587051129-31-8.jpg” background_position=”top_center” min_height=”650px” hover_enabled=”0″ title_text_shadow_style=”preset2″ global_colors_info=”{}” subhead_font_size=”22px” sticky_enabled=”0″][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16.0″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”] [/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row column_structure=”2_3,1_3″ admin_label=”Row” _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” border_radii=”on|5px|5px|5px|5px” border_width_all=”1px” border_color_all=”#000000″
- [2016 Editors’ Choice Poems: Week 2](https://bmpvoices.com/2016-editors-choice-poems-week-2/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”2016 Editors’ Choice Poems: Week 2″ _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/3d0a5-dreamsofpo-1587051129-31-8.jpg” background_position=”top_center” min_height=”650px” hover_enabled=”0″ title_text_shadow_style=”preset2″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” subhead_font_size=”22px” sticky_enabled=”0″][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16.0″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″] We are delighted to present this week’s selections from the Brain
- [Beats, Rhymes, and Spoken Word](https://bmpvoices.com/beats-rhymes-and-spoken-word/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”Beats, Rhymes, and Spoken Word” subhead=”Latonya Pennington” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/3d0a5-dreamsofpo-1587051129-31-8.jpg” background_position=”top_center” min_height=”650px” hover_enabled=”0″ title_text_shadow_style=”preset2″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” subhead_font_size=”22px” sticky_enabled=”0″][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16.0″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″] In high school, I hated hip-hop. As a budding black
- [Dread and Grief, Energy and Song](https://bmpvoices.com/dread-and-grief-energy-and-song/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”Dread and Grief, Energy and Song” subhead=”Nicole Cooley and Cathryn Cofell Discuss the Poetry of Alicia Rebecca Myers” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/3d0a5-dreamsofpo-1587051129-31-8.jpg” background_position=”top_center” min_height=”650px” hover_enabled=”0″ title_text_shadow_style=”preset2″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” subhead_font_size=”22px” sticky_enabled=”0″][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16.0″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}”
- [I Know Why Anne Sexton Had to Die](https://bmpvoices.com/i-know-why-anne-sexton-had-to-die/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”I Knox Why Anne Sexton Had to Die” subhead=”Jen Escher” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” subhead_font_size=”22px” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/3d0a5-dreamsofpo-1587051129-31-8.jpg” background_position=”top_center” min_height=”650px” title_text_shadow_style=”preset2″ global_colors_info=”{}”][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16.0″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”] Before the dichotomously empathetic, accusatory, and self-assigned label “Daddy Issues” and before my
- [Intimacy and Poetry](https://bmpvoices.com/intimacy-and-poetry/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”Intimacy and Poetry” subhead=”A Conversation about Greg Allendorf” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” subhead_font_size=”22px” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/3d0a5-dreamsofpo-1587051129-31-8.jpg” background_position=”top_center” min_height=”650px” title_text_shadow_style=”preset2″ global_colors_info=”{}”][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16.0″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”][Greg Allendorf Two-Person Table in the Back Corner of the Coffee Shop, Next to the Fireplace
- [The Turf Chick](https://bmpvoices.com/the-turf-chick/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”Poetry Month Spotlight” subhead=”The Turf Chick” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” subhead_font_size=”22px” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/3d0a5-dreamsofpo-1587051129-31-8.jpg” background_position=”top_center” min_height=”650px” title_text_shadow_style=”preset2″ global_colors_info=”{}”][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16.0″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”] Some said I was the female Pac, Some said I was the female Biggie, some said I
- [Mothering the Sexy](https://bmpvoices.com/mothering-the-sexy/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”Mothering the Sexy” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/3d0a5-dreamsofpo-1587051129-31-8.jpg” background_position=”top_center” min_height=”650px” hover_enabled=”0″ title_text_shadow_style=”preset2″ global_colors_info=”{}” subhead=”Christie Perfetti Williams” sticky_enabled=”0″ subhead_font_size=”22px”][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16.0″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″] Sixteen years ago, I moved from the warm bosom of my frigid family
- [Room for All of Us](https://bmpvoices.com/room-for-all-of-us/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”Room for All of Us” subhead=”Annette Langlois Grunseth” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” subhead_font_size=”22px” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/3d0a5-dreamsofpo-1587051129-31-8.jpg” background_position=”top_center” min_height=”650px” title_text_shadow_style=”preset2″ global_colors_info=”{}”][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16.0″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”] There is nothing a mother desires more than to see her child feel fulfilled and
- [Sabine Holzman Wins the BMP 2017 Student Poetry Contest](https://bmpvoices.com/sabine-holzman-wins-the-bmp-2017-student-poetry-contest/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”Sabine Holzman Wins the BMP 2017 Student Poetry Contest” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/3d0a5-dreamsofpo-1587051129-31-8.jpg” background_position=”top_center” min_height=”650px” title_text_shadow_style=”preset2″ global_colors_info=”{}”][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16.0″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”] We are delighted to present the winner of April’s Brain Mill Press Student Poetry Contest
- [2017 Editors’ Choice Poems: Week 2](https://bmpvoices.com/2017-editors-choice-poems-week-2/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”2017 Editors’ Choice Poems: Week 2″ subhead=”Topaz Winters” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/3d0a5-dreamsofpo-1587051129-31-8.jpg” background_position=”top_center” min_height=”650px” hover_enabled=”0″ title_text_shadow_style=”preset2″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” subhead_font_size=”22px” sticky_enabled=”0″][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16.0″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″] We are delighted to present this week’s selections from
- [2017 Editors’ Choice Poems: Week 1](https://bmpvoices.com/2017-editors-choice-poems-week-1/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”2017 Editors’ Choice Poems: Week 1″ subhead=”Sully Pujol” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/3d0a5-dreamsofpo-1587051129-31-8.jpg” background_position=”top_center” min_height=”650px” hover_enabled=”0″ title_text_shadow_style=”preset2″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” subhead_font_size=”22px” sticky_enabled=”0″][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16.0″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″] We are delighted to present this week’s selections from
- [Leaning Toward an Other Light](https://bmpvoices.com/leaning-toward-an-other-light/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”Leaning Toward an Other Light” subhead=”Kimberly Blaeser” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/3d0a5-dreamsofpo-1587051129-31-8.jpg” background_position=”top_center” min_height=”650px” hover_enabled=”0″ title_text_shadow_style=”preset2″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” subhead_font_size=”22px” sticky_enabled=”0″][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16.0″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″] In my poetry travels, I often quote Audre Lorde’s claim,
- [A Watershed Moment](https://bmpvoices.com/a-watershed-moment/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”A Watershed Moment” subhead=”Rita Mae Reese” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/3d0a5-dreamsofpo-1587051129-31-8.jpg” background_position=”top_center” min_height=”650px” hover_enabled=”0″ title_text_shadow_style=”preset2″ global_colors_info=”{}” subhead_font_size=”22px” sticky_enabled=”0″][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16.0″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”] I was lucky enough to become a Stegner fellow in fiction a number of years
- [A Poet’s Place](https://bmpvoices.com/a-poets-place/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”A Poet’s Place” subhead=”Abayomi Animashaun” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/3d0a5-dreamsofpo-1587051129-31-8.jpg” background_position=”top_center” min_height=”650px” hover_enabled=”0″ title_text_shadow_style=”preset2″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” subhead_font_size=”22px” sticky_enabled=”0″][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16.0″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″] At the close of AWP a few years ago, I took a
- [Birds of a Feather](https://bmpvoices.com/birds-of-a-feather/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”Birds of a Feather” subhead=”Karla Huston” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/3d0a5-dreamsofpo-1587051129-31-8.jpg” background_position=”top_center” min_height=”650px” hover_enabled=”0″ title_text_shadow_style=”preset2″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” subhead_font_size=”22px” sticky_enabled=”0″][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16.0″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″] When my application materials for Wisconsin Poet Laureate were assembled, I
- [Amplifying Each Other’s Voice](https://bmpvoices.com/amplifying-each-others-voice/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”Amplifying Each Other’s Voice” subhead=”C. Kubasta & Bruce Bennett” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” subhead_font_size=”22px” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/3d0a5-dreamsofpo-1587051129-31-8.jpg” background_position=”top_center” min_height=”650px” title_text_shadow_style=”preset2″ global_colors_info=”{}”][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16.0″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″] In thinking about poetry and teaching, I immediately thought of my teacher
- [Poetic Magic](https://bmpvoices.com/poetic-magic/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”Poetic Magic” subhead=”Christine Brandel” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” subhead_font_size=”22px” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/3d0a5-dreamsofpo-1587051129-31-8.jpg” background_position=”top_center” min_height=”650px” title_text_shadow_style=”preset2″ global_colors_info=”{}”][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16.0″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″] What I teach my students about poetry is that everything—every word, every sound, every line—is the result
- [Give This Poor Subject a Verb](https://bmpvoices.com/give-this-poor-subject-a-verb/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”Give This Poor Subject a Verb” subhead=”Mike Smith” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” subhead_font_size=”22px” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/3d0a5-dreamsofpo-1587051129-31-8.jpg” background_position=”top_center” min_height=”650px” title_text_shadow_style=”preset2″ global_colors_info=”{}”][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16.0″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″] (A couple of years ago, an ambitious and talented student writer burst into
- [Manifesting Mary](https://bmpvoices.com/manifesting-mary/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”Manifesting Mary” subhead=”Carson Jordan” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” subhead_font_size=”22px” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/3d0a5-dreamsofpo-1587051129-31-8.jpg” background_position=”top_center” min_height=”650px” title_text_shadow_style=”preset2″ global_colors_info=”{}”][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16.0″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″] On the last day of the longest January I’ve ever lived through I woke up early just
- [Poems, Questions, and Banana Pancakes](https://bmpvoices.com/poems-questions-and-banana-pancakes/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”Poems, Questions, and Banana Pancakes” subhead=”Sarah Sadie” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” subhead_font_size=”22px” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/3d0a5-dreamsofpo-1587051129-31-8.jpg” background_position=”top_center” min_height=”650px” title_text_shadow_style=”preset2″ global_colors_info=”{}”][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16.0″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″] It is spring of 2017 CE, and, when I am not devastated by the
- [Explaining Myself](https://bmpvoices.com/explaining-myself/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”Explaining Myself” subhead=”Sylvia Bowersox” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” subhead_font_size=”22px” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/3d0a5-dreamsofpo-1587051129-31-8.jpg” background_position=”top_center” min_height=”650px” title_text_shadow_style=”preset2″ global_colors_info=”{}”][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16.0″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”] With all the controversy surrounding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, you might say that this is Vietnam all
- [Arrangements](https://bmpvoices.com/arrangements/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”Arrangements” subhead=”A Poem by C. Kubasta” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/3d0a5-dreamsofpo-1587051129-31-8.jpg” background_position=”top_center” min_height=”650px” hover_enabled=”0″ title_text_shadow_style=”preset2″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” subhead_font_size=”22px” sticky_enabled=”0″][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16.0″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″] [/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” background_color=”#b33f62″ global_colors_info=”{}” global_module=”65720″ theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_row column_structure=”1_3,2_3″ _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default”
- [Poems by Wren Hanks and Tracy Mishkin](https://bmpvoices.com/poems-by-wren-hanks-and-tracy-mishkin/) - Spotlight on the poetry of Wren Hanks and Tracy Mishkin.
- [“A Meme Reimagined,” “The Sound + The Fury,” and “B (If I Should Have a Son)”](https://bmpvoices.com/a-meme-reimagined-the-sound-the-fury-and-b-if-i-should-have-a-son/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”Editors’ Choice Poems” subhead=”“A Meme Reimagined,” “The Sound + The Fury,” and “B (If I Should Have a Son)”” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/3d0a5-dreamsofpo-1587051129-31-8.jpg” background_position=”top_center” min_height=”650px” hover_enabled=”0″ title_text_shadow_style=”preset2″ global_colors_info=”{}” subhead_font_size=”22px” sticky_enabled=”0″][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16.0″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”] We are
- [Favorite YA Comfort Reads](https://bmpvoices.com/favorite-ya-comfort-reads/) - Latonya Pennington recommends five YA comfort reads featuring Black protagonists
- [National Poetry Month Contest Winners 2022](https://bmpvoices.com/national-poetry-month-contest-winners-2022/) - We announce our National Poetry Month contest winner & short list
- [“A Young Girl Pares Fruit,” “You Gotta Let It Hit the Skin,” “Like a Poor Girl,” and “Oyinbo Banana”](https://bmpvoices.com/a-young-girl-pares-fruit-you-gotta-let-it-hit-the-skin-like-a-poor-girl-and-oyinbo-banana/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”Editors’ Choice Poems” subhead=”“A Young Girl Pares Fruit,” “You Gotta Let It Hit the Skin,” “Like a Poor Girl,” and “Oyinbo Banana”” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/3d0a5-dreamsofpo-1587051129-31-8.jpg” background_position=”top_center” min_height=”650px” hover_enabled=”0″ title_text_shadow_style=”preset2″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16.0″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left”
- [Poetry Month Feature](https://bmpvoices.com/poetry-month-feature-rogue-agent/) - Spotlight on ROGUE AGENT and poetry of disability
- [Poems by Travis Chi Wing Lau from Rogue Agent](https://bmpvoices.com/poems-by-travis-chi-wing-lau-from-rogue-agent/) - Spotlight on Rogue Agent and the poetry of Travis Chi Wing Lau
- [“Chicagoshit” by Kwyn Townsend Riley and “Lolita Learns To Drive” by Courtney Felle](https://bmpvoices.com/chicagoshit-by-kwyn-townsend-riley-and-lolita-learns-to-drive-by-courtney-felle/) - Editors' choice poems by Kwyn Townsend Riley and Courtney Felle
- [Poems by Rita Feinstein and Sarah McCartt-Jackson](https://bmpvoices.com/poems-by-rita-feinstein-and-sarah-mccartt-jackson/) - Spotlight on the poetry of Rita Feinstein and Sarah McCartt-Jackson
- [Poetry Month Feature](https://bmpvoices.com/poetry-month-feature-matador-review/) - Spotlight on The Matador Review and the work of poet Torrin Greathouse.
- [Poetry Month Spotlight](https://bmpvoices.com/poetry-month-spotlight-bare-lit/) - A National Poetry Month spotlight on the Bare Lit anthology, edited by Kavita Bhanot, Courttia Newland, and Mend Mariwany
- [Interview Erasure](https://bmpvoices.com/interview-erasure/) - Poet Rita Feinstein introduces a technique for producing poetry from interviews called "interview erasure."
- [Dear TC Tolbert](https://bmpvoices.com/dear-tc-tolbert/) - I am not being eloquent. I just had to spell-check the word eloquent. I grew up without books, in a home where books were viewed with suspicion, but even more than suspicion, total neglect. So were children. I was a child in a house with no books and adults who were hurting and angry and
- [BMP Celebrates National Poetry Month 2019!](https://bmpvoices.com/bmp-celebrates-national-poetry-month-2019/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”Brain Mill Press Celebrates National Poetry Month 2019″ subhead=”Break Poetry Open” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” subhead_font_size=”24px” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/3d0a5-dreamsofpo-1587051129-31-8.jpg” background_position=”top_center” min_height=”650px” title_text_shadow_style=”preset2″ global_colors_info=”{}”][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16.0″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” background_layout=”dark” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″] Poetry Contest: Break Poetry Open Open All April –
- [Editors' Picks Week 4: Poetry by Katie Chicquette, Karen Mandell, Annie Diamond, & C. Prudence Arceneaux](https://bmpvoices.com/editors-picks-week-4-poetry-by-katie-chicquette-karen-mandell-annie-diamond-c-prudence-arceneaux/) - Our editors' space/place selections, week 4, include poetry by Katie Chicquette, Karen Mandell, Annie Diamond, and C. Prudence Arceneaux.
- [Issue 1: Body](https://bmpvoices.com/ab-terra-flash-fiction_issue-1/) - The Ab Terra Flash Fiction Magazine Issue_1 publishes science fiction stories that explore the body.
- [Poetry Month Spotlight: Stephen Roger Powers](https://bmpvoices.com/poetry-month-spotlight-stephen-roger-powers/) - National Poetry Month spotlight on poet Stephen Roger Powers
- [Poetry Month Spotlight: Jessica Jacobs](https://bmpvoices.com/poetry-month-spotlight-jessica-jacobs/) - National Poetry Month spotlight on poet Jessica Jacobs
- [“Demons Are Not Fearless Black Boys with Imagination,” “Lake Girl,” and “Baby Island”](https://bmpvoices.com/demons-are-not-fearless-black-boys-with-imagination-lake-girl-and-baby-island/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”Editors’ Choice Poems” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/3d0a5-dreamsofpo-1587051129-31-8.jpg” background_position=”top_center” min_height=”650px” hover_enabled=”0″ title_text_shadow_style=”preset2″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16.0″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”] We are delighted to present this week’s selections from the Brain Mill Press Poetry Month Contest, Break Poetry Open,
- [If It Weren’t for Daphne Gottlieb](https://bmpvoices.com/if-it-werent-for-daphne-gottlieb/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”Poetry Month Spotlight” subhead=”Jessie Lynn McMains on the Poetry of Daphne Gottlieb” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/3d0a5-dreamsofpo-1587051129-31-8.jpg” background_position=”top_center” min_height=”650px” title_text_shadow_style=”preset2″ global_colors_info=”{}”][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16.0″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”] If it weren’t for Daphne Gottlieb, I wouldn’t be a poet. That
- [Where Stillness and Resistance Have a Form](https://bmpvoices.com/where-stillness-and-resistance-have-form/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”Poetry Month Spotlight” subhead=”Kimberly Blaeser on the work of Lance Henson” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/3d0a5-dreamsofpo-1587051129-31-8.jpg” background_position=”top_center” min_height=”650px” hover_enabled=”0″ title_text_shadow_style=”preset2″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16.0″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″] Expatriate Cheyenne writer Lance Henson’s new work
- [I Wore My Blackest Hair](https://bmpvoices.com/i-wore-my-blackest-hair/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”I Wore My Blackest Hair” subhead=”A Poetry Month Spotlight on Carlina Duan” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/3d0a5-dreamsofpo-1587051129-31-8.jpg” background_position=”top_center” min_height=”650px” title_text_shadow_style=”preset2″ global_colors_info=”{}”][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16.0″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”] When I think of National Poetry Month, I think of high school
- [This Winter, Poetry Said No](https://bmpvoices.com/christine-brandel/) - Poet Christine Brandel on a season in which the muse said "no."
- [Poetry Month Spotlight: Ae Hee Lee](https://bmpvoices.com/poetry-month-spotlight-ae-hee-lee/) - National Poetry Month spotlight on poet Ae Hee Lee
- [Editors' Picks Week 2: Poetry by Anise Black](https://bmpvoices.com/editors-picks-week-2-poetry-by-anise-black/) - Our editors' space/place selections, week 2, include a poem by Anise Black.
- [Jessica Mehta, Iulia Militaru, and Levi Cain](https://bmpvoices.com/jessica-mehta-iulia-militaru-and-levi-cain/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”Editors’ Choice Poems” subhead=”Jessica Mehta, Iulia Militaru, and Levi Cain” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/3d0a5-dreamsofpo-1587051129-31-8.jpg” background_position=”top_center” min_height=”650px” title_text_shadow_style=”preset2″ global_colors_info=”{}”][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”Mehta” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16.0″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”] We are delighted to highlight this week’s selections from the Brain Mill Press
- [Break Poetry Open Contest Winner](https://bmpvoices.com/break-poetry-open-winner/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”Break Poetry Open Contest Winner” subhead=”Hannah Soyer” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/3d0a5-dreamsofpo-1587051129-31-8.jpg” background_position=”top_center” min_height=”650px” title_text_shadow_style=”preset2″ global_colors_info=”{}”][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”Soyer” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16.0″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”] —C. Kubasta, Editor, BMP Celebrates National Poetry Month 2019 Winner “what do i know about consent
- [Robin Gow, Jessica Nguyen, Danny McLaren, and Uma Menon](https://bmpvoices.com/gow-nguyen-mclaren-and-menon/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”Editors’ Choice Poems” subhead=”Robin Gow, Jessica Nguyen, Danny McLaren, and Uma Menon” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/3d0a5-dreamsofpo-1587051129-31-8.jpg” background_position=”top_center” min_height=”650px” title_text_shadow_style=”preset2″ global_colors_info=”{}”][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”Robin Gow” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16.0″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”] We are delighted to present this week’s selections from the
- [National Poetry Month Spotlight: Poetic YA Featuring Black Protagonists](https://bmpvoices.com/national-poetry-month-spotlight-poetic-ya/) - For National Poetry Month, Latonya Pennington recommends five poetic YA novels featuring Black protagonists.
- [“Distance & Temerity” and “Ken”](https://bmpvoices.com/editors-choice-week-3/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”“Distance & Temerity” and “Ken”” subhead=”Editors’ Selections” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/3d0a5-dreamsofpo-1587051129-31-8.jpg” background_position=”top_center” min_height=”650px” title_text_shadow_style=”preset2″ global_colors_info=”{}”][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”section” _builder_version=”4.16″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row admin_label=”row” _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”] We are delighted to present this week’s selections from the Brain Mill Press Poetry
- [“O Villain, My Friend,” “A Song for New Orleans,” and “Would a farm and a frigid river be fitting for a girl?”](https://bmpvoices.com/wells-richard-craven-and-weingart/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”“O Villain, My Friend,” “A Song for New Orleans,” and “Would a farm and a frigid river be fitting for a girl?”” subhead=”Poetry Month Selections” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/3d0a5-dreamsofpo-1587051129-31-8.jpg” background_position=”top_center” min_height=”650px” title_text_shadow_style=”preset2″ global_colors_info=”{}”][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16.0″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”
- [2020 Editors' Choice Poems: Week 1](https://bmpvoices.com/2020-editors-choice-poems-week-1/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”2020 Editors’ Choice Poems” subhead=”Week 1″ _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/3d0a5-dreamsofpo-1587051129-31-8.jpg” background_position=”top_center” min_height=”650px” title_text_shadow_style=”preset2″ global_colors_info=”{}”][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”Editors’ Choice Poetry — Editors’ Note” _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” background_color=”#bc3f38″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”PT Sans||||||||” background_layout=”dark” global_colors_info=”{}”] We are delighted to present this week’s selections from the Brain Mill
- [Poetry Month Spotlight: Tracy Mishkin](https://bmpvoices.com/poetry-month-spotlight-tracy-mishkin/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”Poetry Month Spotlight” subhead=”Tracy Mishkin” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/3d0a5-dreamsofpo-1587051129-31-8.jpg” background_position=”top_center” min_height=”650px” title_text_shadow_style=”preset2″ global_colors_info=”{}”][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ max_width=”80%” module_alignment=”center” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16.0″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”] Indiana Writers Center, Poem a Day Challenge, April 2020 Rachel Sahaidachny, Executive Director of the Indiana Writers
- [Poetry Month Spotlight: Angela Trudell Vasquez](https://bmpvoices.com/poetry-month-spotlight-angela-trudell-vasquez/) - National Poetry Month spotlight on poet Angela Trudell Vasquez
- [Editors' Picks Week 1: Poetry by Liz Ahl and Nora Kirkham](https://bmpvoices.com/editors-picks-week-1-poetry-by-liz-ahl-and-nora-kirkham/) - Our editors' space/place selections, week 1, include poetry by Liz Ahl and Nora Kirkham.
- [“Nine Months,” “Cryptic Crossword LV,” “Her / Him / Our / Their / Us / Them / They Body,” and “Jaws Was on TV on a Saturday Morning”](https://bmpvoices.com/nine-months-cryptic-crossword-lv-her-him-our-their-us-them-they-body-and-jaws-was-on-tv-on-a-saturday-morning/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”“Nine Months,” “Cryptic Crossword LV,” “Her / Him / Our / Their / Us / Them / They Body,” and “Jaws Was on TV on a Saturday Morning”” subhead=”Editors’ Choice Picks” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/3d0a5-dreamsofpo-1587051129-31-8.jpg” background_position=”top_center” min_height=”650px” title_text_shadow_style=”preset2″ global_colors_info=”{}”][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||”
- [BMP Celebrates National Poetry Month 2020!](https://bmpvoices.com/bmp-celebrates-national-poetry-month-2020/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”BMP Celebrates National Poetry Month 2020″ _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/3d0a5-dreamsofpo-1587051129-31-8.jpg” background_position=”top_center” min_height=”650px” title_text_shadow_style=”preset2″ global_colors_info=”{}”][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16.0″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”] Poetry Contest: Interconnection & Community Open All April – Fee Free For this year’s National Poetry Month at
- [Poetry Month Spotlight: Jessica Mehta](https://bmpvoices.com/spotlight-jessica-mehta/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”Poetry Month Spotlight” subhead=”Jessica Mehta” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/3d0a5-dreamsofpo-1587051129-31-8.jpg” background_position=”top_center” min_height=”650px” hover_enabled=”0″ title_text_shadow_style=”preset2″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ max_width=”80%” module_alignment=”center” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16″ header_font_size=”36px” header_line_height=”1.3em” background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”] Artist Statement I am a multi-award-winning poet, artist, and performance artist
- [Poetry Month Spotlight: Shaindel Beers](https://bmpvoices.com/poetry-month-spotlight-shaindel-beers/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”Poetry Month Spotlight” subhead=”Shaindel Beers” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/3d0a5-dreamsofpo-1587051129-31-8.jpg” background_position=”top_center” min_height=”650px” hover_enabled=”0″ title_text_shadow_style=”preset2″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ max_width=”80%” module_alignment=”center” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”] Artist Statement Happy National Poetry Month, and thank you for inviting me to
- [Animal Rescue](https://bmpvoices.com/animal-rescue/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”Animal Rescue” subhead=”Wren Hanks” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/3d0a5-dreamsofpo-1587051129-31-8.jpg” background_position=”top_center” min_height=”650px” hover_enabled=”0″ title_text_shadow_style=”preset2″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16.0″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″] My position as liaison between the open-admissions city animal shelter and almost four hundred
- [What’s Currently Shaping My Writing](https://bmpvoices.com/whats-currently-shaping-my-writing/) - Emily Corwin on her current poetry influences and selections from her collection MY TALL HANDSOME
- [Poetry Month Spotlight: David Southward](https://bmpvoices.com/poetry-month-spotlight-david-southward/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”Poetry Month Spotlight” subhead=”David Southward” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/3d0a5-dreamsofpo-1587051129-31-8.jpg” background_position=”top_center” min_height=”650px” hover_enabled=”0″ title_text_shadow_style=”preset2″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ max_width=”80%” module_alignment=”center” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”] Message in a Bottle As a kid in the 1970s, I was
- [Poetry Month Spotlight: Rita Feinstein](https://bmpvoices.com/poetry-month-spotlight-rita-feinstein/) - Poetry Month spotlight on poet Rita Feinstein, author of LIFE ON DODGE.
- [The Portage](https://bmpvoices.com/the-portage/) - C. Kubasta introduces her poetry column, PORTAGING, focusing on poetry from the Midwest.
- [The Pleasures of Disrupted Reading](https://bmpvoices.com/the-pleasures-of-disrupted-reading/) - C. Kubasta reviews Lindsay Drager's poetry collection THE SORROW PROPER and Sarah Sadie's WE ARE TRAVELING THROUGH THE DARK AT TREMENDOUS SPEEDS.
- [The Poetry of Excel Spreadsheets](https://bmpvoices.com/the-poetry-of-excel-spreadsheets/) - C. Kubasta on #metoo, poetry, Isobel O'Hare, and form.
- [A Tinderbox Is a Thing Readily Ignited](https://bmpvoices.com/a-tinderbox-is-a-thing-readily-ignited/) - C. Kubasta reviews Katherine Rauk's BURIED CHOIRS and discusses Molly Sutton Kiefer's TINDERBOX POETRY JOURNAL and TINDERBOX EDITIONS.
- [Archive as much as you like [something will always be left out].](https://bmpvoices.com/archive-as-much-as-you-like-something-will-always-be-left-out/) - C. Kubasta reviews Jane Lewty's poetry collection IN ONE FORM TO FIND ANOTHER.
- [The Negative Space of the Page](https://bmpvoices.com/the-negative-space-of-the-page/) - C. Kubasta reviews Emily Bowles's poetry collection HIS JOURNAL, MY STELLA.
- [Maybe Love Is a Many-Legged Thing](https://bmpvoices.com/maybe-love-is-a-many-legged-thing/) - C. Kubasta reviews Tara Betts's poetry collection BREAK THE HABIT.
- [Prove Something Happened](https://bmpvoices.com/prove-something-happened/) - C. Kubasta reviews Sara Ryan's poetry collection, NEVER LEAVE THE FOOT OF AN ANIMAL UNSKINNED.
- [A Lean-To Upon a Once-Was](https://bmpvoices.com/a-lean-to-upon-a-once-was/) - C. Kubasta reviews Paula Cisewski's poetry collection THE THREATENED EVERYTHING.
- [So Much of a Mother Is Liquid](https://bmpvoices.com/so-much-of-a-mother-is-liquid/) - C. Kubasta reviews Callista Buchen's poetry collection LOOK LOOK LOOK.
- [#SaferAtHome or #AloneTogether Reading: Poetry When We’re Craving Proximity](https://bmpvoices.com/safer-at-home-reading/) - C. Kubasta reviews CRUSH by Richard Siken and THE DEAD ANIMAL HANDBOOK, edited by Cam Awkward-Rich and sam sax.
- [My House of Mysterious Compartments](https://bmpvoices.com/my-house-of-mysterious-compartments/) - C. Kubasta reviews Tara Burke's ANIMAL LIKE ANY OTHER
- [We Are Made of Woven Memory Circles](https://bmpvoices.com/we-are-made-of-woven-memory-circles/) - On Raki Kopernik's WE ARE MADE OF WOVEN MEMORY CIRCLES
- [BMP Voices Celebrates National Poetry Month 2022!](https://bmpvoices.com/bmp-voices-celebrates-national-poetry-month-2022/) - BMP Voices celebrates National Poetry Month 2022 with a contest, poetry, essays, and more.
- ["StarLion" Is a Dynamic Superhero Story with Heart](https://bmpvoices.com/star-lion-review/) - Latonya Pennington reviews StarLion, a dynamic superhero story featuring a Black protagonist and a diverse team of adolescent superheroes
- [“SLAY” Is a Creative and Geeky Read for Young Black Readers](https://bmpvoices.com/slay-book-review/) - Latonya Pennington reviews Brittney Morris's SLAY
- [Most Anticipated 2022 Reads](https://bmpvoices.com/most-anticipated-2022-reads/) - Latonya Pennington looks forward to five exciting YA titles featuring Black protagonists for 2022
- [Issue 5: Alternate Dimensions](https://bmpvoices.com/issue-5-alternate-dimensions/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” admin_label=”Ab Terra FF Header” _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Rowan_Spray_Sci-Fi_3.jpg”][et_pb_fullwidth_header header_fullscreen=”on” content_orientation=”bottom” admin_label=”Fullwidth Header” _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default” subhead_font_size=”26px” subhead_letter_spacing=”6px” background_enable_color=”off” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Ab-Terra-Flash-Fiction-2.png” background_layout=”light” text_shadow_style=”preset2″ text_shadow_horizontal_length=”0.22em”][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.9.2″ max_width=”70%” module_alignment=”center” collapsed=”off”][et_pb_row admin_label=”Ab Terra FF Story Block – Cassandra’s Burden ” _builder_version=”4.9.2″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” collapsed=”off”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”3.25″ custom_padding=”|||” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_image src=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Rowan_Spray_Sci_Fi_11.jpg” title_text=”Rowan_Spray_Sci_Fi_11″ align=”center” _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default” width=”54%” max_width=”54%” module_alignment=”center”][/et_pb_image][et_pb_text admin_label=”Cassandra’s
- [“Things We Couldn't Say” Is a Powerful Book about Embracing Love and Letting Go](https://bmpvoices.com/things-we-couldnt-say-review/) - Latonya Pennington reviews Jay Coles's THINGS WE COULDN'T SAY, whose authentic first-person narrator, Gio, explores the complexities of navigating trauma, life, and love as a Black, bisexual high school student.
- [“Tristan Strong Keeps Punching” Burns Bright and High](https://bmpvoices.com/tristan-strong-keeps-punching-burns-bright-and-high/) - Latonya Pennington reviews the final book in the Tristan Strong trilogy, where the world of Alke collides with the real world, and protagonist Tristan learns how to integrate Black grief, Black joy, and his own anger.
- [The Clash of the Titans: Beading, Art, and Incarceration](https://bmpvoices.com/the-clash-of-the-titans-beading-art-and-incarceration/) - Writer Michael J. Moore on the power of art in incarceration.
- ["Getting By" Is a Thoughtful Story about Attraction and Personal Growth](https://bmpvoices.com/getting-by-is-a-thoughtful-story-about-attraction-and-personal-growth/) - Latonya Pennington reviews "Getting By" by Jaire Sims, a thoughtful Own Voices coming-of-age novel about attraction and personal growth from the perspective of an autistic gay teenage Black male protagonist.
- ["Tiffany Sly Lives Here Now" Is a Dark Story of Family, Trauma, and Resilience](https://bmpvoices.com/tiffany-sly-lives-here-now-is-a-dark-story-of-family-trauma-and-resilience/) - Latonya Pennington reviews Dana L. Davis's "Tiffany Sly Lives Here Now."
- [Issue 4: Climate](https://bmpvoices.com/issue-4-climate/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” admin_label=”Ab Terra FF Header” _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/AbTerra4_cover_1200_628.jpg”][et_pb_fullwidth_header header_fullscreen=”on” content_orientation=”bottom” admin_label=”Fullwidth Header” _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default” subhead_font_size=”26px” subhead_letter_spacing=”6px” background_enable_color=”off” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/AbTerra4_Cover_opensans.jpg” background_layout=”light” text_shadow_style=”preset2″ text_shadow_horizontal_length=”0.22em”][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.9.2″ max_width=”70%” module_alignment=”center”][et_pb_row admin_label=”Ab Terra FF Story Block – The Great Collapse” _builder_version=”4.9.2″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”3.25″ custom_padding=”|||” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_image src=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/kevin-wolf-ItQBfuJGrOk-unsplash-scaled.jpg” title_text=”kevin-wolf-ItQBfuJGrOk-unsplash” align=”center” _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default” width=”54%” max_width=”54%” module_alignment=”center”][/et_pb_image][et_pb_text admin_label=”The Great Collapse
- ["Cinderella Is Dead" Offers an Engrossing Twist on the Classic Fairytale](https://bmpvoices.com/cinderella-is-dead-review/) - Latonya Pennington reviews Kalynn Bayron's "Cinderella Is Dead," a Black, lesbian, feminist take on the classic fairytale.
- [On Small and Unusual Spaces](https://bmpvoices.com/on-small-and-unusual-spaces/) - Writer Valarie Frost considers the impact of the small and unusual spaces she has inhabited on her development of self and identify.
- [Pride Spotlight: Black Queer YA](https://bmpvoices.com/pride-spotlight-black-queer-ya/) - For Pride Month, Latonya Pennington celebrates six YA novels by Black authors featuring LGBTQIA+ protagonists.
- [The Weight of the Stars Is a Gorgeous Novel about New Possibilities](https://bmpvoices.com/the-weight-of-the-stars/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”%22The Weight of the Stars%22 Is a Gorgeous Novel about New Possibilities” _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default” title_font=”Roboto||||||||” title_font_size=”36px” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/4bbbf-adultartar-1558727262-31.jpg” parallax=”on” height=”501px” text_shadow_style=”preset1″][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.9.2″ background_color=”#8300E9″ use_background_color_gradient=”on” background_color_gradient_start=”#8300e9″ background_color_gradient_end=”#353535″][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.9.2″ background_color=”#FFFFFF” background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” custom_padding=”60px|60px|60px|60px|false|false” border_radii=”on|15px|15px|15px|15px”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”3.25″ custom_padding=”|||” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.2″ text_font=”PT Sans||||||||” text_font_size=”17px” text_line_height=”1.8em” header_font=”Roboto||||||||” header_font_size=”26px” header_letter_spacing=”6px” header_line_height=”1.4em” background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” text_orientation=”justified”
- [Issue 3: Robots](https://bmpvoices.com/issue-3-robots/) - The Ab Terra Flash Fiction Magazine Issue_3 publishes science fiction stories that explore the potential roles of robots in our future.
- [“Every Body Looking” Dances with Verse and Self-Expression](https://bmpvoices.com/every-body-looking-dances-with-verse-and-self-expression/) - Latonya Pennington reviews Candice Iloh's verse novel "Every Body Looking," about the coming-of-age journey of a Nigerian American girl dealing with CTEs and searching for authentic self-expression.
- [2021 Editors' Choice Poems: Week 2](https://bmpvoices.com/2021-editors-choice-poems-week-2/) - Poetry selections from the second week of our 2021 National Poetry Month contest
- [I Will Make Beautiful Memories](https://bmpvoices.com/i-will-make-beautiful-memories/) - [et_pb_section][et_pb_row][et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_text] In October of 2004, my mom picked me up from my college dorm and drove me about twenty miles up Interstate 79 to Edinboro, Pennsylvania, where we pulled into one of those perfect, Desperate Housewives-type neighborhoods with the immaculate lawns and minimalist traditional houses just a few inches too close together. We parked
- [Thousandth Time](https://bmpvoices.com/thousandth-time/) - Expedition Press's Myrna Keliher on letterpress printing, poetry, and taking on an ambitious project to create an irreplaceable artifact.
- [Girling in the Season of #MeToo](https://bmpvoices.com/girling-in-the-season-of-metoo/) - It is the season of #MeToo. The hashtag trends. A status, copied and pasted, is shared: If all the women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote “Me too” as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem. Soon, the status is altered – “women” becomes “people” to
- [This Plastic Casing of My Body, An Art](https://bmpvoices.com/this-plastic-casing-of-my-body-an-art/) - Emily Bowles on permanence, disposability, consumption, and the plastic nature of her femininity.
- [Take Away: How a Renovation in Cuba Connected Me to My Chinese and Cuban Heritages](https://bmpvoices.com/take-away-katarina-wong/) - Artist and writer Katarina Wong on Cuban cement tile, home improvement, inspiration, and engaging with her Chinese and Cuban heritage through art.
- [National Poetry Month Contest Winner 2021: Avalon Felice Lee](https://bmpvoices.com/avalon-felice-lee-winner-poetry-month-contest-2021/) - C. Kubasta shares Avalon Felice Lee's "Gershwin & Sons" as the winner of our 2021 National Poetry Month contest, with shortlist poems by Sara Maher, Angelita Hampton, Mallika Khan, Deborah Pless, and Laya Reddy.
- [Appreciating the Process: Art Therapy, Poetry, and Grief](https://bmpvoices.com/appreciating-the-process/) - Alyssa Gruett shares insights into her process with art therapy, poetry, and grief.
- [2021 Editors' Choice Poems: Week 4](https://bmpvoices.com/2021-editors-choice-poems-week-4/) - Poetry selections from the final week of our 2021 National Poetry Month contest
- [Sentinel Species: Animals as Witnesses and Warnings](https://bmpvoices.com/sentinel-species-chase-dimock/) - Chase Dimock on "sentinel species," poetry, & our relationship with the natural environment.
- [Skein to Skein](https://bmpvoices.com/skein-to-skein-charles-valle/) - Charles Valle on poetry, parenthood, and grieving in the era of late-stage capitalism.
- [2021 Editors' Choice Poems: Week 3](https://bmpvoices.com/2021-editors-choice-poems-week-3/) - Poetry selections from the third week of our 2021 National Poetry Month contest
- [National Poetry Month Spotlight: Novels in Verse](https://bmpvoices.com/national-poetry-month-spotlight-novels-in-verse/) - For National Poetry Month, Latonya Pennington recommends five YA verse novels by Black authors.
- [“Black Enough” Showcases Blackness Joyfully and Honestly](https://bmpvoices.com/black-enough-review/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”“Black Enough” Showcases Blackness Joyfully and Honestly” _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default” title_font=”Roboto||||||||” title_font_size=”36px” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/26be8-befullcover-1586278068-54-1.jpg” parallax=”on” height=”501px” text_shadow_style=”preset1″][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”3.22″ background_color=”#8300E9″ use_background_color_gradient=”on” background_color_gradient_start=”#8300e9″ background_color_gradient_end=”#353535″][et_pb_row _builder_version=”3.25″ background_color=”#FFFFFF” background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” custom_padding=”60px|60px|60px|60px|false|false” border_radii=”on|15px|15px|15px|15px”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”3.25″ custom_padding=”|||” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.2″ text_font=”PT Sans||||||||” text_font_size=”17px” text_line_height=”1.8em” header_font=”Roboto||||||||” header_font_size=”26px” header_letter_spacing=”6px” header_line_height=”1.4em” background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” text_orientation=”justified” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″] The myriad experiences
- [“Black Girl Unlimited” Shows the Magic of Surviving and Thriving](https://bmpvoices.com/echo-brown-black-girl-unlimited/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”“Black Girl Unlimited” Shows the Magic of Surviving and Thriving” _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default” title_font=”Roboto||||||||” title_font_size=”36px” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/61091-blackgirlunl-1615307225-64-1.jpg” parallax=”on” height=”501px” text_shadow_style=”preset1″][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”3.22″ background_color=”#8300E9″ use_background_color_gradient=”on” background_color_gradient_start=”#8300e9″ background_color_gradient_end=”#353535″][et_pb_row _builder_version=”3.25″ background_color=”#FFFFFF” background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” custom_padding=”60px|60px|60px|60px|false|false” border_radii=”on|15px|15px|15px|15px”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”3.25″ custom_padding=”|||” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.2″ text_font=”PT Sans||||||||” text_font_size=”17px” text_line_height=”1.8em” header_font=”Roboto||||||||” header_font_size=”26px” header_letter_spacing=”6px” header_line_height=”1.4em” background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” text_orientation=”justified”] In 2013,
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- [“A Song Below Water” Is a Compelling Story of Sisterhood, Magic, and Police Brutality](https://bmpvoices.com/a-song-below-water-review/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”“A Song Below Water” Is a Compelling Story of Sisterhood, Magic, and Police Brutality” _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default” title_font=”Roboto||||||||” title_font_size=”36px” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/b0005-brionabaker-1591115610-60.jpg” parallax=”on” height=”501px” hover_enabled=”0″ text_shadow_style=”preset1″ title_text=”Song Below Water header” sticky_enabled=”0″][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”3.22″ background_color=”#8300E9″ use_background_color_gradient=”on” background_color_gradient_start=”#8300e9″ background_color_gradient_end=”#353535″][et_pb_row _builder_version=”3.25″ background_color=”#FFFFFF” background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” custom_padding=”60px|60px|60px|60px|false|false” border_radii=”on|15px|15px|15px|15px”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”3.25″ custom_padding=”|||” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.2″ text_font=”PT Sans||||||||” text_font_size=”17px” text_line_height=”1.8em”
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- [“Felix Ever After” Shows That the Love You Deserve Is Inside and Out](https://bmpvoices.com/felix-ever-after-review/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”“Felix Ever After” Shows That the Love You Deserve Is Inside and Out” _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default” title_font=”Roboto||||||||” title_font_size=”36px” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/635f7-untitleddes-1588869788-13.png” parallax=”on” height=”501px” text_shadow_style=”preset1″][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”3.22″ background_color=”#8300E9″ use_background_color_gradient=”on” background_color_gradient_start=”#8300e9″ background_color_gradient_end=”#353535″][et_pb_row _builder_version=”3.25″ background_color=”#FFFFFF” background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” custom_padding=”60px|60px|60px|60px|false|false” border_radii=”on|15px|15px|15px|15px”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”3.25″ custom_padding=”|||” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.2″ text_font=”PT Sans||||||||” text_font_size=”17px” text_line_height=”1.8em” header_font=”Roboto||||||||” header_font_size=”26px” header_letter_spacing=”6px” header_line_height=”1.4em” background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”
- [“The Summer of Everything” Is a Fun and Heartfelt Teen Summer Rom-Com](https://bmpvoices.com/summer-of-everything/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”“The Summer of Everything” Is a Fun and Heartfelt Teen Summer Rom-Com” _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default” title_font=”Roboto||||||||” title_font_size=”36px” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/b2998-headerthe-1598967523-58.png” parallax=”on” height=”501px” hover_enabled=”0″ text_shadow_style=”preset1″ title_text=”The Summer of Everything header” sticky_enabled=”0″][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”3.22″ background_color=”#8300E9″ use_background_color_gradient=”on” background_color_gradient_start=”#8300e9″ background_color_gradient_end=”#353535″][et_pb_row _builder_version=”3.25″ background_color=”#FFFFFF” background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” custom_padding=”60px|60px|60px|60px|false|false” border_radii=”on|15px|15px|15px|15px”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”3.25″ custom_padding=”|||” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.2″ text_font=”PT Sans||||||||” text_font_size=”17px” text_line_height=”1.8em” header_font=”Roboto||||||||”
- [“The Beauty That Remains” Is a Raw and Liberating Meditation on Grief and Music](https://bmpvoices.com/beauty-that-remains/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”“The Beauty That Remains” Is a Raw and Liberating Meditation on Grief and Music” _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default” title_font=”Roboto||||||||” title_font_size=”36px” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/c9288-pexelsstas-1596568379-45.jpg” parallax=”on” height=”501px” hover_enabled=”0″ text_shadow_style=”preset1″ sticky_enabled=”0″ title_text=”Beauty that Remains header”][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”3.22″ background_color=”#8300E9″ use_background_color_gradient=”on” background_color_gradient_start=”#8300e9″ background_color_gradient_end=”#353535″][et_pb_row _builder_version=”3.25″ background_color=”#FFFFFF” background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” custom_padding=”60px|60px|60px|60px|false|false” border_radii=”on|15px|15px|15px|15px”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”3.25″ custom_padding=”|||” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.2″ text_font=”PT Sans||||||||” text_font_size=”17px” text_line_height=”1.8em”
- [“Magnifique Noir Book 2” Exemplifies the Magic of Self-Care](https://bmpvoices.com/magnifique-noir-book-2/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”“Magnifique Noir Book 2” Exemplifies the Magic of Self-Care” _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default” title_font=”Roboto||||||||” title_font_size=”36px” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/ef9e8-magnifiquen-1581434073-28-1.png” parallax=”on” height=”501px” text_shadow_style=”preset1″][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”3.22″ background_color=”#8300E9″ use_background_color_gradient=”on” background_color_gradient_start=”#8300e9″ background_color_gradient_end=”#353535″][et_pb_row _builder_version=”3.25″ background_color=”#FFFFFF” background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” custom_padding=”60px|60px|60px|60px|false|false” border_radii=”on|15px|15px|15px|15px”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”3.25″ custom_padding=”|||” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.2″ text_font=”PT Sans||||||||” text_font_size=”17px” text_line_height=”1.8em” header_font=”Roboto||||||||” header_font_size=”26px” header_letter_spacing=”6px” header_line_height=”1.4em” background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” text_orientation=”justified” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″] Created
- [“How To Be Remy Cameron” Explores Identity with Complexity and Care](https://bmpvoices.com/how-to-be-remy-cameron-review/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”“How To Be Remy Cameron” Explores Identity with Complexity and Care” _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default” title_font=”Roboto||||||||” title_font_size=”36px” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/2b0e7-alexbracken-1583419037-91-1.jpg” height=”501px” hover_enabled=”0″ text_shadow_style=”preset1″ sticky_enabled=”0″][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”3.22″ background_color=”#8300E9″ use_background_color_gradient=”on” background_color_gradient_start=”#8300e9″ background_color_gradient_end=”#353535″][et_pb_row _builder_version=”3.25″ background_color=”#FFFFFF” background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” custom_padding=”60px|60px|60px|60px|false|false” border_radii=”on|15px|15px|15px|15px”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”3.25″ custom_padding=”|||” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.2″ text_font=”PT Sans||||||||” text_font_size=”17px” text_line_height=”1.8em” header_font=”Roboto||||||||” header_font_size=”26px” header_letter_spacing=”6px” header_line_height=”1.4em” background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” text_orientation=”justified”]
- [Most Anticipated 2021 Reads](https://bmpvoices.com/most-anticipated-2021-reads/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”Most Anticipated 2021 Reads” _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default” title_font=”Roboto||||||||” title_font_size=”36px” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/5db77-pexelsmuham-1611068197-51-1.jpg” height=”501px” text_shadow_style=”preset1″][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.9.2″ background_color=”#8300E9″ use_background_color_gradient=”on” background_color_gradient_start=”#8300e9″ background_color_gradient_end=”#353535″][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.9.2″ background_color=”#FFFFFF” background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” custom_padding=”60px|60px|60px|60px|false|false” border_radii=”on|15px|15px|15px|15px”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”3.25″ custom_padding=”|||” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.2″ text_font=”PT Sans||||||||” text_font_size=”17px” text_line_height=”1.8em” header_font=”Roboto||||||||” header_font_size=”26px” header_letter_spacing=”6px” header_line_height=”1.4em” background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” text_orientation=”justified” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″] A new year means reading new books.
- [“The Black Flamingo” Is an Electrifying, Poetic Declaration of Identity](https://bmpvoices.com/the-black-flamingo/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”“The Black Flamingo” Is an Electrifying, Poetic Declaration of Identity” _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default” title_font=”Roboto||||||||” title_font_size=”36px” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/f492b-silhouetteo-1594236253-16-1.jpg” parallax=”on” height=”501px” hover_enabled=”0″ text_shadow_style=”preset1″ title_text=”Black Flamingo header” sticky_enabled=”0″][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”3.22″ background_color=”#8300E9″ use_background_color_gradient=”on” background_color_gradient_start=”#8300e9″ background_color_gradient_end=”#353535″][et_pb_row _builder_version=”3.25″ background_color=”#FFFFFF” background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” custom_padding=”60px|60px|60px|60px|false|false” border_radii=”on|15px|15px|15px|15px”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”3.25″ custom_padding=”|||” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.2″ text_font=”PT Sans||||||||” text_font_size=”17px” text_line_height=”1.8em” header_font=”Roboto||||||||” header_font_size=”26px” header_letter_spacing=”6px” header_line_height=”1.4em” background_size=”initial”
- [“Who Put This Song On?” Is a Heartfelt Exploration of Identity and Mental Health](https://bmpvoices.com/who-put-this-song-on-is-a-heartfelt-exploration-of-identity-and-mental-health/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”“Who Put This Song On?” Is a Heartfelt Exploration of Identity and Mental Health” _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default” title_font=”Roboto||||||||” title_font_size=”36px” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/570da-insungyoon-1575998291-2.jpg” parallax=”on” height=”501px” text_shadow_style=”preset1″][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”3.22″ background_color=”#8300E9″ use_background_color_gradient=”on” background_color_gradient_start=”#8300e9″ background_color_gradient_end=”#353535″][et_pb_row _builder_version=”3.25″ background_color=”#FFFFFF” background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” custom_padding=”60px|60px|60px|60px|false|false” border_radii=”on|15px|15px|15px|15px”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”3.25″ custom_padding=”|||” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.2″ text_font=”PT Sans||||||||” text_font_size=”17px” text_line_height=”1.8em” header_font=”Roboto||||||||” header_font_size=”26px” header_letter_spacing=”6px” header_line_height=”1.4em” background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left”
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- [“A Dream So Dark” Is a Dark, Thrilling Return To Wonderland](https://bmpvoices.com/a-dream-so-dark-is-a-dark-thrilling-return-to-wonderland/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”“A Dream So Dark” Is a Dark, Thrilling Return To Wonderland” _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default” title_font=”Roboto||||||||” title_font_size=”36px” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/3d502-treetunnel-1573571743-45-1.jpg” parallax=”on” height=”501px” hover_enabled=”0″ text_shadow_style=”preset1″ title_text=”Dream So Dark header” sticky_enabled=”0″][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.9.2″ background_color=”#8300E9″ use_background_color_gradient=”on” background_color_gradient_start=”#8300e9″ background_color_gradient_end=”#353535″][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.9.2″ background_color=”#FFFFFF” background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” custom_padding=”60px|60px|60px|60px|false|false” border_radii=”on|15px|15px|15px|15px”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”3.25″ custom_padding=”|||” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.2″ text_font=”PT Sans||||||||” text_font_size=”17px” text_line_height=”1.8em” header_font=”Roboto||||||||” header_font_size=”26px” header_letter_spacing=”6px”
- [Tristan Strong Will Sweep You Away with Epic Adventure and African Folklore](https://bmpvoices.com/tristan-strong-will-sweep-you-away-with-epic-adventure-and-african-folklore/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”Tristan Strong Will Sweep You Away with Epic Adventure and African Folklore” _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default” title_font=”Roboto||||||||” title_font_size=”36px” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/2f8b0-untitleddes-1570111816-43.png” parallax=”on” height=”501px” text_shadow_style=”preset1″][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.9.2″ background_color=”#8300E9″ use_background_color_gradient=”on” background_color_gradient_start=”#8300e9″ background_color_gradient_end=”#353535″][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.9.2″ background_color=”#FFFFFF” background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” custom_padding=”60px|60px|60px|60px|false|false” border_radii=”on|15px|15px|15px|15px”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”3.25″ custom_padding=”|||” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.2″ text_font=”PT Sans||||||||” text_font_size=”17px” text_line_height=”1.8em” header_font=”Roboto||||||||” header_font_size=”26px” header_letter_spacing=”6px” header_line_height=”1.4em” background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” text_orientation=”justified”
- ["Opposite of Always" Teaches How to Value Love through Time Travel](https://bmpvoices.com/opposite-of-always-teaches-how-to-value-love-through-time-travel/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”%22Opposite of Always%22 Teaches How to Value Love through Time Travel” _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default” title_font=”Roboto||||||||” title_font_size=”36px” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/5441d-bethtatea6-1566486860-57-1.jpg” parallax=”on” height=”501px” hover_enabled=”0″ text_shadow_style=”preset1″ title_text=”Opposite of Always header” sticky_enabled=”0″][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.9.2″ background_color=”#8300E9″ use_background_color_gradient=”on” background_color_gradient_start=”#8300e9″ background_color_gradient_end=”#353535″][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.9.2″ background_color=”#FFFFFF” background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” custom_padding=”60px|60px|60px|60px|false|false” border_radii=”on|15px|15px|15px|15px”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”3.25″ custom_padding=”|||” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.2″ text_font=”PT Sans||||||||” text_font_size=”17px” text_line_height=”1.8em” header_font=”Roboto||||||||” header_font_size=”26px” header_letter_spacing=”6px”
- ["The Black Veins" Is an Epic Adventure Filled with Magic and Family](https://bmpvoices.com/the-black-veins-is-an-epic-adventure-filled-with-magic-and-family/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”%22The Black Veins%22 Is an Epic Adventure Filled with Magic and Family” _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default” title_font=”Roboto||||||||” title_font_size=”36px” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/bccaa-artartistic-1561562241-23.jpg” parallax=”on” height=”501px” hover_enabled=”0″ text_shadow_style=”preset1″ title_text_color=”#000000″ background_layout=”light” sticky_enabled=”0″][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.9.2″ background_color=”#8300E9″ use_background_color_gradient=”on” background_color_gradient_start=”#8300e9″ background_color_gradient_end=”#353535″][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.9.2″ background_color=”#FFFFFF” background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” custom_padding=”60px|60px|60px|60px|false|false” border_radii=”on|15px|15px|15px|15px”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”3.25″ custom_padding=”|||” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.2″ text_font=”PT Sans||||||||” text_font_size=”17px” text_line_height=”1.8em” header_font=”Roboto||||||||” header_font_size=”26px” header_letter_spacing=”6px” header_line_height=”1.4em”
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- [The Many Different Loves of “Let’s Talk About Love”](https://bmpvoices.com/the-many-different-loves-of-lets-talk-about-love/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”The Many Different Loves of %22Let’s Talk about Love%22″ _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default” title_font=”Roboto||||||||” title_font_size=”36px” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/c089f-thoughtcata-1534953381-92-scaled.jpg” parallax=”on” height=”501px” text_shadow_style=”preset1″][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.9.2″ background_color=”#8300E9″ use_background_color_gradient=”on” background_color_gradient_start=”#8300e9″ background_color_gradient_end=”#353535″][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.9.2″ background_color=”#FFFFFF” background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” custom_padding=”60px|60px|60px|60px|false|false” border_radii=”on|15px|15px|15px|15px”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”3.25″ custom_padding=”|||” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.2″ text_font=”PT Sans||||||||” text_font_size=”17px” text_line_height=”1.8em” header_font=”Roboto||||||||” header_font_size=”26px” header_letter_spacing=”6px” header_line_height=”1.4em” background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” text_orientation=”justified” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″] When
- [Nicola Yoon’s “Everything, Everything” Is Everything](https://bmpvoices.com/nicola-yoons-everything-everything-is-everything/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”Nicola Yoon’s %22Everything, Everything%22 Is Everything” _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default” title_font=”Roboto||||||||” title_font_size=”36px” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/e66ad-everythingo-1538242185-70-scaled.jpg” parallax=”on” height=”501px” text_shadow_style=”preset1″][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.9.2″ background_color=”#8300E9″ use_background_color_gradient=”on” background_color_gradient_start=”#8300e9″ background_color_gradient_end=”#353535″][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.9.2″ background_color=”#FFFFFF” background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” custom_padding=”60px|60px|60px|60px|false|false” border_radii=”on|15px|15px|15px|15px”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”3.25″ custom_padding=”|||” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.2″ text_font=”PT Sans||||||||” text_font_size=”17px” text_line_height=”1.8em” header_font=”Roboto||||||||” header_font_size=”26px” header_letter_spacing=”6px” header_line_height=”1.4em” background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” text_orientation=”justified” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″] As a teen, I
- [Why Afro YA Matters](https://bmpvoices.com/why-afro-ya-matters/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”Why Afro YA Matters” _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default” title_font=”Roboto||||||||” title_font_size=”36px” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/4e79d-afroorigina-1538242343-54.jpg” parallax=”on” height=”501px” text_shadow_style=”preset1″][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.9.2″ background_color=”#8300E9″ use_background_color_gradient=”on” background_color_gradient_start=”#8300e9″ background_color_gradient_end=”#353535″][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.9.2″ background_color=”#FFFFFF” background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” custom_padding=”60px|60px|60px|60px|false|false” border_radii=”on|15px|15px|15px|15px”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”3.25″ custom_padding=”|||” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.2″ header_font=”Roboto||||||||” header_font_size=”26px” header_letter_spacing=”6px” header_line_height=”1.4em” background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″] When I was a teen, the most relatable young adult book
- [The Unforgettable Nerdiness of Felicia Abelard](https://bmpvoices.com/the-unforgettable-nerdiness-of-felicia-abelard/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=”The Unforgettable Nerdiness of Felicia Abelard” _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default” title_font=”Roboto||||||||” title_font_size=”36px” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/6d521-unforgettabl-1538237569-62-1-scaled.jpg” parallax=”on” height=”501px” text_shadow_style=”preset1″][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.9.2″ background_color=”#8300E9″ use_background_color_gradient=”on” background_color_gradient_start=”#8300e9″ background_color_gradient_end=”#353535″][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.9.2″ background_color=”#FFFFFF” background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” custom_padding=”60px|60px|60px|60px|false|false” border_radii=”on|15px|15px|15px|15px”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”3.25″ custom_padding=”|||” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.2″ text_font=”PT Sans||||||||” text_font_size=”17px” text_line_height=”1.8em” header_font=”Roboto||||||||” header_font_size=”26px” header_letter_spacing=”6px” header_line_height=”1.4em” background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” text_orientation=”justified”] From the moment I started reading
- [Issue 2: Time](https://bmpvoices.com/ab-terra-flash-fiction_issue-2/) - The Ab Terra Flash Fiction Magazine Issue_2 publishes science fiction stories that explore the limitless concept of Time.
- [“Sisters Always Love Each Other the Most of Anybody”: A Review of Leslie Pietrzyk’s <em>Silver Girl</em>](https://bmpvoices.com/sisters-always-love-each-other-the-most-of-anybody-a-review-of-leslie-pietrzyks-silver-girl/) - C. Kubasta reviews Leslie Pietrzyk's SILVER GIRL, a rule-breaking book about sisterhood that broke through Kubasta's COVID-induced reader's block.
- [2021 Editors' Choice Poems: Week 1](https://bmpvoices.com/editors-choice-poems-week-1/) - Poetry selections from the first week of our 2021 National Poetry Month contest
- [Terrible Awful Beauty](https://bmpvoices.com/terrible-awful-beauty/) - Angela Voras-Hills writes about motherhood, anxiety, and consumerism, in verse and essay.
- [Disgusted & Enthralled & In Love: A Review of <em>Louder Birds</em> by Angela Voras-Hills](https://bmpvoices.com/review-louder-birds-voras-hills/) - C. Kubasta reviews Angela Voras-Hills's LOUDER BIRDS, a poetry collection that engages ideas of home, the corporeal, life, and loss.
- [BMP Voices Celebrates National Poetry Month 2021!](https://bmpvoices.com/bmp-voices-celebrates-national-poetry-month-2021/) - BMP Voices celebrates National Poetry Month 2021 with a contest, poetry, essays, and more.
- [Brain Mill Press Celebrates Poetry Month 2015 Winning Poets](https://bmpvoices.com/brain-mill-press-celebrates-poetry-month-2015-winning-poets/) - We’re overwhelmed by the positive response to our first poetry month. Both weeks, we had talented poets participate, and it was a particular joy to showcase their poems on our blog. During the events, when we received a new poem in our inbox, it was genuinely exciting. We read them right away, and we read
- [Love or Fear](https://bmpvoices.com/love-or-fear/) - Brain Mill Press was honored to get these five wonderful “Love or Fear” submissions to our final event for Poetry Month. Please read the final entries by Elizabeth Berry, Pam Faste, GB Gordon, Dylan Loring, and Karen Wellsbury, and tomorrow, we’ll announce an overall winner from both the April 17th and this April 30th Brain
- [Work](https://bmpvoices.com/work/) - Brain Mill Press is so pleased to present our first set of poets participating in Brain Mill Press Celebrates Poetry Month 2015. This group of poets responded to the poem prompt WORK. We’re moved and honored to present these poets and their poems to you. On Growing Up Elizabeth Berry On the day that my
- [Monasteries](https://bmpvoices.com/monasteries/) - Count them luckyWho have them within Who feel no needTo follow prophets To distant islandsOr remote beaches Where salvation is assuredAnd paradise promised. Count them luckyWho know the opening Of gates within, whoSeated as they are Remain beside altarsWhere blue and greenSing arias. In them, Night,With a thousand yellow lights,Braids its hair, And rinses its
- [April in All Her Awful Beauty](https://bmpvoices.com/april-in-all-her-awful-beauty/) - April you break my bones.You sucker punch me right in the side of the head.If there was a mountain in my backyard I would find you therestaring down with a twisted mouth as you hurl lightning bolts, or bouldersthat you have hoisted above your head. Instead, on my flat green acres, you lay low,Army crawling
- [Underfoot](https://bmpvoices.com/underfoot/) - i. all mistand movement my daughteris messingwith her hairwith her newbody at the mirror old dogwarming my sleep and a memoryheld betweenthe fingertips smoothpurple glassbead ii. how slowly my heart and lungs the shining reeds filled with grey sunwith lichen stone if i scrub the linensif i apply the maskbrush
- [How I Will Do It](https://bmpvoices.com/how-i-will-do-it/) - Under the glint of your glasses I will love you and as the hiss of the last can of Sprite sizzles from your hand I will drink your extra Sprite and I will walk your dog I will love you under the yellow basement lights of the DMV I will let you feed me foreign
- [You Have Reached Your Destination](https://bmpvoices.com/you-have-reached-your-destination/) - My phone promises me a gas station isthe bookstore I’m looking for. Twice.I consider a metaphor about refuelingor contents under pressure over timebut it would be a stretch. Truth is, I’m lost. Truth is there are no maps for days like this.There is no destination. That’s a liewe feed to kids that’s worse than Santa.December
- [The Raisin & The Bullet](https://bmpvoices.com/the-raisin-and-the-bullet/) - Alicia Rebecca Myers is a poet and essayist who holds an MFA from NYU, where she was a Goldwater Writing Fellow. Her work has appeared most recently in Best New Poets 2015; The Rumpus; Brain, Child Magazine; Gulf Coast; jubilat; The Carolina Quarterly; and Fairy Tale Review. In February of 2014, she was awarded a
- [Imani Davis Wins the BMP 2016 Poetry Month Contest](https://bmpvoices.com/imani-davis-wins-the-bmp-2016-poetry-month-contest/) - We are delighted to present the winner of April’s Brain Mill Press Celebrates Poetry Month Contest for 2016: “Grave Robber Digs with a Pen” by Imani Davis. We received submissions from nearly eighty individual poets of a very high caliber, from which poetry month coordinator C. Kubasta selected the winning poem, as well as short
- [Meatcage](https://bmpvoices.com/meatcage/) - The sunlight seeps soft through the womblike redness of my closed eyelids as I ease into consciousness. Can I actually feel the crackling dislocations from my elbows to my fingertips, or is it simply familiarity, the recognition that the slabs of meat at the ends of my arms must somehow still belong to me, even
- [Ek Khat Meri Ma Ke Liye / A Letter To My Mother](https://bmpvoices.com/ek-khat-meri-ma-ke-liye-a-letter/) - Dear Ma, I understand and appreciate the amount of work and love and labor you have put into raising us. You and dad came to this country as newlywed young professionals, and together you were always fighting as a team. You were twenty-one and scared and fought your way through the racist, sexist, classist, homophobic
- [Detached](https://bmpvoices.com/detached-when-your-body-becomes-a-machine/) - People often talk about out-of-body experiences, usually during a dramatic scene on television or in a movie where someone is presumed dead but sees their life from the outside and fights to return. I think this is a required scene for every season of Grey’s Anatomy, since someone on the brink of death gasps, choking
- [The Awakening](https://bmpvoices.com/the-awakening/) - I’m twenty-seven years old and have never had a “good night’s sleep.” From childhood through early adulthood, I struggled to fall asleep at night and fought to stay awake during the day. At its most extreme, my body would demand twelve-hour sleep-wake cycles: refusing to wake up until 3 p.m. and finally caving in to
- [Every Season Has a Narrative](https://bmpvoices.com/every-season-has-a-narrative/) - Fluffy. It was the one word that came to me as I watched myself on screen for the first time while sitting in my second-grade classroom. The week prior, my homeroom teacher, Mrs. Koda, had filmed each student in her class present our book reports to the class. The theme was biography, and being filmed
- [Forming out of the Void](https://bmpvoices.com/forming-out-of-the-void/) - At eight years old, I sat in church while the pastor informed the congregation that a wife’s body did not belong to her, that marriage meant that her husband owned her sexuality. I doubt this was the first time I had heard this sermon, but it juts out in my memory. I sat stiffly in
- [Scripting Resistance](https://bmpvoices.com/scripting-resistance/) - Indian cinema is the world’s largest film industry in terms of film production – you’ve probably heard of Bollywood, the mainstream Hindi-language film industry and Indian cinema’s largest film producer. Bollywood, screened worldwide, with its colourful musical sets, expensive aesthetics and elaborate dramatic plots, is often considered an ambassador of Indian culture, usually generalised to
- [My Anger Is My Kindness](https://bmpvoices.com/my-anger-is-my-kindness/) - My anger is a palpable thing. It starts from my center, white-hot behind my ribcage, a supernova replacing my heart. It runs through my veins, fills my fingertips with fire, boils over and spews from my mouth with the savage strength of an atomic bomb explosion levelling everything before me. My vision dims, and the
- [Utilizing Anger in the #SelfCare Communities](https://bmpvoices.com/utilizing-anger-in-the-selfcare-communities/) - The first time I remember seeing Audre Lorde’s proclamation that caring for herself was an act of political warfare widely circulate on social media was during the Women’s March of 2017. That January, millions of women lined city streets in protest of the inauguration of Donald Trump. I imagine that their chants were the same
- [The Big Fat Lies We Tell Ourselves](https://bmpvoices.com/big-fat-lies-we-tell-ourselves/) - The big fat lies we tell ourselves. Think, then vote... It may seem easy to live in denial, to push away the truth, to tell ourselves the same big fat lies. Women have been doing so for ages. But denial can in the end lead to self sacrifice, to self-annulment, and the realization can be
- [When One's Anger Is Justified But Silenced](https://bmpvoices.com/when-ones-anger-is-justified-but-silenced/) - It all began with an article I posted on my Filipino Student Association’s Facebook page. Entitled “My ‘Get Out’ Moment as an Overseas Student,” my essay is about how my first landlady in New Zealand, a white woman, gradually unmasked her racism to me while I was living in her house, beginning slowly but surely
- [We are not](https://bmpvoices.com/we-are-not/) - We are not extinct, though I thinkmyself into the past. You wake upin the middle of the night certainthere is someone outside your window,afraid that we will do to youwhat you’ve done to us. A bullet sneaking through thetrees, smallpox-infected blankets presented to youas housewarming gifts—this threat of painis worse than the pain itselfand when
- [Inaccessible Justice Movements Aren't Just](https://bmpvoices.com/inaccessible-justice-movements-arent-just/) - Almost every time I see a new justice initiative, I repeat the same cycle: I scan the list of what justice means to the organizers. Time and time again, I see justice declared for people of color, immigrants, members of the LGBTQ community, sexual assault survivors, and more. Justice is declared as a need for
- [Any Woman You Know](https://bmpvoices.com/any-woman-you-know/) - You are sitting in your friend’s car and you both look exhausted. You have just left an event where women are telling stories about their sexual assaults. You left that event in the gentrified neighborhood that you no longer recognize, and you are in Rogers Park, another neighborhood where gentrification is being claimed in block-sized
- [Biking the Fringe](https://bmpvoices.com/biking-the-fringe/) - On my bike, limbs and face open to the elements, I’m slapped by untrimmed branches, scratched by overhanging shrubs, accosted by gnats, and splashed with mud. Most of the time, I’m grateful for the smell of pine sap and jasmine on my daily commute through the Bay Area. Yet I envy the tiny mobile house
- [street songs](https://bmpvoices.com/street-songs/) - At first he told me he liked my dreadsAnd I hesitated to tell him they weren’t realThen he told me my body looked deliciousWhy did I hesitate to tell him that it wasn’t his meal? I’m not supposed to let them touch meI’m not supposed to let them seeI don’t suppose it felt that goodI
- [A Place to Belong](https://bmpvoices.com/a-place-to-belong/) - (step)motherland You are the bloodPoolingWhere I fellYou are the woundBlossomingYou are red lipsSmudged in a circle- Japan. You were a snowy morningThe likes we woke up to as kidsYou were a clean paper sheetBlinking cursor and a click. .... (Now I know you are a strawberrySmashed on the spotless floor.)Now I know we are the
- [Anger](https://bmpvoices.com/anger-an-alchemic-formula/) - The way to remove darkness from a room is simply to turn on a light. In the same way to rid yourself of any difficulty, concentrate on the solution rather than the problem. —Daniel Levin, Zen Oracle Deck I’m a renewed fan of the manga Fullmetal Alchemist. I watch each episode now with more conscious
- [I'm Scared to Be Angry](https://bmpvoices.com/im-scared-to-be-angry/) - I don’t like being angry. To me, it feels unnatural. Something at odds with my personality. I’m mostly extroverted, friendly, fun-loving, and kind. I don’t enjoy situations that cause stress. But I’m also opinionated, confident, and stubborn. If I believe I’m right about an issue, the least I can do is talk about it. Make
- [Matter After All](https://bmpvoices.com/matter-after-all/) - “can’t waste a day when the night brings a hearse.” - rage against the machine you know, i have been realizing as the days pile on that I like rage not the band– well, yes, the band –but also anger i’ve always thought that anger was veryproductive.like a fireit gets rid of somethingdestroys itmakes it
- [Quiz: How Well Do You Know Your Colonizer?](https://bmpvoices.com/quiz-how-well-do-you-know-your-colonizer/) - 1. When your co-worker sees a book on your desk she: A. acknowledges that you readB. tells you she doesn’t read books about oppressionC. exclaims that she is reading a book about a black man who was wrongly accused of capital murder in the 80s and 90s. 2. When said co-worker tells you about the
- [Teacher Torture](https://bmpvoices.com/teacher-torture/) - I.Normally I sit up frontBut for this classI sit all the way in the back,In the corner.It’s hard for me to see the screenBut it keeps me out of sight& I have a good pulse of the roomIn case the spirit catches meAnd I decide to participate This happens oftenAnd lately, I notice my professorMisunderstanding
- [Reclaiming the Tool That Maimed Me](https://bmpvoices.com/reclaiming-the-tool-that-maimed-me/) - I grew up believing that anger was a terrible thing. Anger was a grown man looming over you with wild eyes, screaming at you for dropping a dish. Anger brought the humiliation of being yelled at in front of friends, teammates, and even other adults who never, ever lifted a finger to protect me. Anger
- [Dispatches from an Angry Journalist of Color](https://bmpvoices.com/dispatches-from-an-angry-journalist-of-color/) - “I’ve never understood the anger and exclusivity of many people of color like this one,” a comment reads. “They hang out with people of color and sit at the colored table making no efforts to get to know me, then blame me and say they don’t feel welcome.” The commenter was, supposedly, one of my
- [Freezing Spell for Immigration and Customs Enforcement](https://bmpvoices.com/freezing-spell-for-immigration-and-customs/) - Beware the law of threes— whatever magick we send into the world will be visited on us threefold, so imagine they are coming for us while we are coming for them. Beware the law of threes. Beware the rule of law. Beware the rule of threes that the Universe doesn’t pay us back. This is
- [Elegy for Claudia Patricia Gomez Gonzalez](https://bmpvoices.com/elegy-for-claudia-patricia-gomez-gonzalez/) - i- every poem i write is about the same grief: how ordinary it is to want the American dream. i don’t know what Gomez has been through but i can taste it. today, i made posho because i wanted to avoid the actual conditions of my life. along the borders of my bed, i plant
- [OMFG](https://bmpvoices.com/omfg-until-the-tyger-learns/) - In an average lifespan a person invests a year looking for the things they’ve forgotten. 9 august 2017 Those who have laboured, night and day, Monday to Friday, on their unhappiness are right to lick their chops over it as much as they do. 11 august 2017 In the contorted bookkeeping of the broken, the
- [Trishula](https://bmpvoices.com/trishula/) - Lal Qila Red engenders everything. When enraged, we see red. It is the color of blood, of rage, heat. Scarlet is marked as lustful, indicative of adultery, if we were to listen to Hawthorne. JudeoChristian hegemony marks it as corporeal, sinful, lustful, degraded. I reject that. Red is the color of blood, pumping in our
- [(level eye) | (eye level)](https://bmpvoices.com/level-eye/) - There is no handheld happiness because existence triggers trauma. The pupil peels plastic papers from wilted water-bottles; the retina rummages through sixty shades of sepia and sorrow, trusting translucent temptation. Options oscillate between burden, beauty, burden. They never make much sense to those who like to misplace gunshots and cumshots in your cornea. A teal-shaped
- [I'm Angry About the Lingering -isms in Academia](https://bmpvoices.com/lingering-isms-in-academia/) - I am a Black woman from a mixed-heritage background who has spent most of my life within an educational system, from nursery school to my current role as a postdoctoral researcher in the field of Respiratory Immunology. My education and career have taken place across three countries and two continents. During this time, I have
- [asphyxiation](https://bmpvoices.com/asphyxiation/) - breathing was a lung-diamond, encrusted with a drowning metaphor swarming urchins, coral-glistening, not dead, not white, not yet so what needle destroyed this wet ghost, I’ve entrusted my closest friends with a spindle, a wheel of all my bad decisions, here the line is long a thread, thin around my neck, I couldn’t exhale even
- [You Have a Body](https://bmpvoices.com/you-have-a-body/) - Open October 20 to November 5, 2018 "Your body is not your art, it’s your paintbrush. Whether your paintbrush is a tall paintbrush or a thin paintbrush or a stocky paintbrush or a scratched up paintbrush is completely irrelevant. What is relevant is that YOU HAVE A PAINTBRUSH which can be used to transfer your
- [BMP Voices - Because They're a Good Doggo (or Cat, or Bird, or Snake...)](https://bmpvoices.com/bmp-voices-because-theyre-a-good-doggo/) - Open March 12 to May 10, 2019 Brain Mill Press is seeking short photo essays under 750 words about your relationship with your companion animal or service animal, living or deceased. As we navigate difficult times, we aim to celebrate what the relationships with our animals mean to us. Your submission can be funny, tender,
- [Anger](https://bmpvoices.com/anger/) - Open October 5-19, 2018 “We are constantly being told not to be angry. As a black woman especially, I hear it from all corners. To be angry is to give in to stereotypes of the shrill feminist, the mad black woman. To be angry is to trade intellect for emotion. To be angry is to
- [Seventeen Is a Glimpse of Who We’ll Be](https://bmpvoices.com/seventeen-is-a-glimpse-of-who-well-be/) - In a radio interview on September 18, Iowa senator Chuck Grassley said of the Brett Kavanaugh hearings: "You understand we’re talking about thirty-five years ago. I’d hate to ask, have somebody ask me what I did thirty-five years ago. And I think I look at it this way." As many commentators have pointed out, disturbed,
- [On Self Love](https://bmpvoices.com/on-self-love/) - I invented masturbation. You’re welcome. It’s a feature of my persistent narcissism that I have often assumed I’m the first to discover something inexplicable. I’m the first to stumble into the vortex of writing, that out-of-control spiral of need and greed and forward motion. I’m the first to dice up my skin in the name
- [Love in the Age of Online Dating](https://bmpvoices.com/love-in-the-age-of-online-dating/) - We live in a dating world where the playing field has definitely changed. Gone are the days when someone would actually walk up to you, strike up a conversation, ask for your number, call you, engage in light banter, ask you out, plan a date, show up for the date, and things would progress after
- [House](https://bmpvoices.com/house/) - My grandmother grabs my wrist and draws me closer. Over seventy years of lived experience separate us, but when she calls me a child I know she is conjuring a memory, not a body. The child she recalls hasn’t reached puberty; this child is chatty, she doesn’t move as much as she glides. She has
- [The Best I Ever Had](https://bmpvoices.com/the-best-i-ever-had/) - Oh, Romance, you are the best I’ve ever had. It started as these things usually do, I guess. A Susan Johnson paperback left out at the home where I was babysitting. A friend’s mother with a subscription to Harlequin Temptations that she kept in the top left hand section of her book shelf. She noticed
- [To Genre with Love](https://bmpvoices.com/to-genre-with-love/) - As I sit and consider my favourite book genre, I think of how I never really understood what genres meant when I first started choosing what I wanted to read, and how liberating that was. I’ve always loved reading, and with parents who propagated reading as the ultimate learning tool, I often found myself from
- [A Eulogy for Frank Underwood](https://bmpvoices.com/a-eulogy-for-frank-underwood/) - In season two of House of Cards, Frank Underwood comes home to find his wife, Claire, drinking and flirting with one of his security agents. I am sitting with my girlfriend on the couch, watching on my laptop. The music is ominous. We have already seen Frank kill two people close to him. The scene
- [Recovering Salvadoran Stories](https://bmpvoices.com/recovering-salvadoran-stories/) - Shortly after the Trump Administration announced it was ending Temporary Protected Status for Salvadorans, the New York Times ran an article with reading suggestions for understanding the country those immigrants are expected to return to in 2019. Of the three books suggested, only one is by a Salvadoran author. Readers are led to assume that
- [Believing Takes Practice](https://bmpvoices.com/believing-takes-practice/) - The problem is that the form of a sonnet is clear and exact. Fourteen lines, plus a strict rhyme scheme, plus iambic pentameter, equals sonnet. Life doesn’t tell you the form. Life says figure it out. I’d run up the stairs to my room, take the box off the bookshelf and put the cassette in
- [Learning How to Say My Name](https://bmpvoices.com/learning-how-to-say-my-name/) - Throughout my life various songs, books, and films have been crucial in teaching me how to name myself. At ten years old, in the last singing competition I ever lost, Whitney’s “Greatest Love Of All” challenged me to find my voice, to cultivate range, and to love myself through the early hardships of childhood abuse
- [The Defiant Ones](https://bmpvoices.com/the-defiant-ones/) - I think about the passage of time a lot, and the difference time can make on our perspectives. There are moments when time doesn’t seem to make a difference at all, and there are moments when time changes our perspective completely. In May 2012, I graduated Sarah Lawrence College on my dad’s fifty-fourth birthday. In
- [Winnie the Pooh and the Essence of Childhood](https://bmpvoices.com/winnie-the-pooh-childhood/) - In today’s media, there’s often a push for children’s stories to be more energized than those aimed at adults, especially when it comes to film. This usually manifests itself through aspects like faster pacing, quicker movements and/or animation, and more physical or juvenile jokes. This type of story is not inherently bad, and I do
- [Speak, friend, and enter](https://bmpvoices.com/speak-friend-and-enter/) - The first time I read Lord of the Rings, I was annoyed by the anal description of the Shire and abandoned it. My mother insisted that this trilogy of books had saved her life, and I just needed to push forward. At the time, I had discovered the magic of reading, but I could not
- [Revisiting The Argonauts](https://bmpvoices.com/revisiting-the-argonauts/) - When I first read Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts, I stopped only twice: once to cry, and once to squeal. “It’s us,” I texted my significant other, my heart full of love that this existed and rage that I had never seen anything else like it. “It’s a story like ours.” To say The Argonauts is
- [The Valley of Never](https://bmpvoices.com/the-valley-of-never/) - “Look,” said Ashley to Quinn, “you got the breasts. I want the belly part.” “Fine,” said Quinn. “Fine, okay. So. ‘With his warm tongue, he found her navel again, and—’” “Say David!” “Right. So, ‘With his warm tongue, David found her navel again, and . . .’” I pulled a flat, mildewy pillow over my
- [The Power of an All-Lesbian Space](https://bmpvoices.com/the-power-of-an-all-lesbian-space/) - When I realized I was a lesbian in the summer of 2005, I seriously thought I was one of the only ones in the wide world. I had never read a book about a lesbian. I had never seen a movie about a lesbian relationship. I had never visited a lesbian bar, or attended a
- [Oh, Facebook](https://bmpvoices.com/oh-facebook-my-decision-to-delete-you/) - It’s past midnight. The blue light from my computer screen illuminates my face as I scroll through my friends’ Facebook posts. This friend has just traveled to Hawaii with her husband. That friend has just hand-made clothes for her children. That friend has completed a Tough Mudder with his boyfriend. I click the thumbs-up icon,
- [Why Strike](https://bmpvoices.com/why-strike/) - When I was my students’ age — seventeen, eighteen — I didn’t know what a strike was. I had never witnessed one. In U.S. History, a teacher must have mentioned one of the famous ones — the labor strikes of the 1800s, maybe, or the post-WWII auto strikes. But to me at seventeen, a strike
- [Compliance](https://bmpvoices.com/compliance/) - It’s something I’ve heard since I was a child: Go to school, get an education, get a good job. It’s a mantra recited by Black parents to Black children ever since we were allowed to be educated and gainfully employed. So much of Black history is about celebrating Black firsts: the first Black to reach
- [Surveillance](https://bmpvoices.com/surveillance/) - I stopped being a writer; today I have the words to tell you why. I don’t write because I’m being watched. I turn off the words; I numb the feelings; I avoid the associations; I distract the thinking; I step away from the situation. I am here to document the ways in which I have
- [Minor](https://bmpvoices.com/minor/) - I started stealing razors from my dad in the first grade. It was easy. I watched my mom and older sisters do the same for as long as I could remember. As soon as I began sprouting hair in areas I didn’t want covered (i.e., not the top of my head), I slicked them off
- [Leave Your Indoor Voice Behind](https://bmpvoices.com/leave-your-indoor-voice-behind/) - When I was a kid, I used my indoor voice a lot, even when I was outside. It didn’t feel natural to me to be loud, to yell. My mom taught me that I don’t need to be loud to get my point across. My mom also taught me and my siblings that it’s important
- [Self Care Isn’t Selfish — It’s Survival](https://bmpvoices.com/self-care-isnt-selfish-its-survival/) - The idea of self-care sounds, well, selfish. And to be selfish is bad. At least that’s what we’ve been taught since we were toddlers. We were told to share even when we didn’t want to and to apologize whether or not we felt it. We, as women especially, are told by our parents, caregivers, teachers,
- [Why I’d Rather Be Called Radical Than Beautiful](https://bmpvoices.com/why-id-rather-be-called-radical-than-beautiful/) - Beautiful. Defined by Merriam-Webster as “generally pleasing” or “exciting aesthetic pleasure.” Synonyms include “attractive,” “appealing,” “delightful,” “ravishing,” or “stunning.” Personal addendum: beauty is also commonly used to enforce hierarchies, perpetuate toxic standards of attractiveness, and sexualize women without their consent. Growing up in a predominantly white / Asian neighborhood, I acutely felt the weight of
- [Resisting the Urge to Conform](https://bmpvoices.com/resisting-the-urge-to-conform/) - The way a person’s hair grows from their head is purely genetic. It’s not a curious wonder. It’s not an oddity. It’s just hair. We can wear our hair in any style and it’s perfectly fine—it’s an exciting and purely personal choice. My hair journey goes a little something like this: Growing up a tomboy
- [Pigeonholed](https://bmpvoices.com/pigeonholed/) - Rihanna released the widely anticipated video for the Drake-assisted “Work” last month, the first single off her eighth studio album, Anti. Not only were we lucky enough to receive two separate clips in a single sitting, but the Barbadian singer graciously took us into a steamy night of Caribbean-tinged twerking and whining (two dances that
- [Reclaiming the Race Card](https://bmpvoices.com/reclaiming-the-race-card/) - I was born in Britain at the tail end of the Thatcher era. My mother was a nurse, my father an accountant, and we moved from London to a suburban part of Essex just after I came along. There’s a lot I don’t remember about my childhood. I don’t remember any specific toys I liked
- [In Memory of Screenwriter Daniel Gerson](https://bmpvoices.com/in-memory-of-screenwriter-daniel-gerson/) - Meet the Robinsons is an obscure film by Disney standards, but it’s one I’ve made a habit of rewatching because of my personal connection to its narrative. The last time I saw it was a few months ago, on the first Friday of February. I remember it clearly because screenwriter Daniel Gerson passed away the
- [What I Want to Read When I Grow Up](https://bmpvoices.com/what-i-want-to-read-when-i-grow-up/) - I’m still not sure what I want to be when I grow up. At the moment, I’m a graduate student in the sciences. And yet, I never was a big reader of science fiction when I was still a speck of a grade-schooler. I was convinced from the age of eight, when I first read
- [Sociohistorical Fiction; or Morrison in My Life](https://bmpvoices.com/sociohistorical-fiction-or-morrison-in-my-life/) - The best I continue to have, to enjoy, and to love is Toni Morrison. But I don’t read her: she reads to me. The power in her narrative, the pain she digs out of your insides, the metaphorical genius that cuts through the literal mind and forces you to search for her meaning, the unmatched
- [Time, Rhythm, and Life](https://bmpvoices.com/time-rhythm-and-life/) - I don’t know how far back memories can go to infancy, but I think that most of us can at least imagine a time before we became aware of time. When we’re infants the world is a crib, our parents, and the people we rely on to keep us alive. We have no concept of
- [Living with Ghosts](https://bmpvoices.com/living-with-ghosts/) - I. Sponge The narrative of immigration is peripatetic—and not just in a physical sense. The experience of leaving and coming, of going and arriving, of coming to terms with and never fully accepting the elusive nature of the very experience is like a ribbon that you attempt to straighten out that curls up the moment
- [The Birth of Devil’s Revolver](https://bmpvoices.com/the-birth-of-devils-revolver/) - In 2010, I was zealously playing an action-adventure Wild West video game called Red Dead Redemption by Rockstar Games. The game follows ex-outlaw John Marston, on a quest to atone for his past and save his family from a shady government agency during the early twentieth century. It is deep, moving, engrossing, and a helluva
- [On Making Memoir](https://bmpvoices.com/on-making-memoir/) - Memoir is getting naked in front of a room full of strangers and saying, “Here are my stretch marks, here are my fat rolls, here is my cellulite, and here is the irritating boil on my ass and my reoccurring chin hair.” One is not allowed to wear Spanx, utilize Instagram filters or self-tanner in
- [Future Echoes](https://bmpvoices.com/future-echoes/) - The first part of Al Davison and Yen Quach’s Future Echoes — the debut release from BMP’s Liminal Comics imprint — releases today in a digital edition. We are excited to present this interview by Liminal Comics editor Alisa Kwitney with Future Echoes creators and collaborators Al Davison and Yen Quach, who talk about working
- [Speech and Debate](https://bmpvoices.com/speech-and-debate/) - Halfway through sixth grade, my family moved from Roselle, a diverse working-class neighborhood, to Freehold, New Jersey, an upper-middle class predominantly white living. Thus began the year of silence. Out of protest, sadness, depression, and puberty I vowed to my parents that I would never ever speak to them again. I later apologized for it,
- [Spine to Deckle / Anatomy of a Book](https://bmpvoices.com/spine-to-deckle-anatomy-of-a-book/) - Frontispiece Claudia’s studio was perched in a corner of the second floor of a rickety old nineteenth-century mill that had been converted into artists’ spaces. It took up a double city block in the crusty New England hamlet of Easthampton, Massachusetts. You could wander around the building for hours, peering into studios and wondering what
- [Slowing Down, Sourdough Style](https://bmpvoices.com/slowing-down-sourdough-style/) - As a freelance writer querying one novel and writing a second, all I did was write. In between polishing magazine pitches and churning out digital marketing content, I wrote and story-planned for one to two hours a day. Since I’d given up daily Facebook trawls and automated tweets in the name of productivity, activities like
- [How the Hospital Unlocked m(M)e](https://bmpvoices.com/how-the-hospital-unlocked-mme/) - PopSixSquishUh uhCiceroLipschitz! —“Cell Block Tango,” Chicago The six merry murderesses of the Cook County Jail have nothing on the nurses who “took care” of me when I was interred in the mental hospital. In three mental hospitals at that. All interred. Horrible nurses. They ranged from yelling in my face to stealing art from me;
- [Good Eggs](https://bmpvoices.com/good-eggs/) - I am one of those people who finds comfort in reading about food. The first of these kinds of stories to appeal to me was Bread and Jam for Frances. This picture book, by Russell Hoban with illustrations by Lillian Hoban, features an anthropomorphic badger named Frances. Russell Hoban wrote six Frances books between 1960
- [Love and Fear](https://bmpvoices.com/love-and-fear/) - Joanna Bourne When scientists offer the flatworm Planaria a choice of going left or right, shock it on one side and give it whatever a Planarian desires on the other (this is an example of why scientists should never be put in charge of social programs), the flatworm learns to avoid the shock. One can
- [Behind the Bamboo Screen](https://bmpvoices.com/behind-the-bamboo-screen/) - I have been reading for as long as I remember. My mother claims my reading accelerated my short-sightedness, and I’d like to think that my ability to read a book while walking has allowed me to flourish when it comes to texting or tweeting when I’m on foot. I read and reread my mother’s collection
- [The Women’s Story](https://bmpvoices.com/the-womens-story/) - It has been an intense few months. We’ve read about scheming politicians, afflicted refugees, innocents killed for the sake of “national security.” We’ve seen protests suppressed, military overkill, and, of course, an utter disregard for the truth supported by the dissemination of “alternative facts.” I am, of course, talking about the biblical texts we’ve read
- [The Theology of Abuse](https://bmpvoices.com/the-theology-of-abuse/) - I read recently about a man who was a faithful member of his church. He was involved with the youth group and hosted summer activities at his farm. And he sexually molested many children and youth. When the civil authorities finally exposed him as a child predator, the leadership of the church made a plan
- [Of Prayers, Protests, and the Body](https://bmpvoices.com/of-prayers-protests-and-the-body/) - Just before 7 p.m on July 7, as protesters gathered in Belo Garden Park, in Dallas, Texas, I settled onto a hard wooden seat in the choir stall of St. John’s Abbey Church in Collegeville, Minnesota. As they chanted “enough is enough,” we chanted Psalm 59: “You have been a refuge in the day of
- [Bathroom Bills](https://bmpvoices.com/bathroom-bills/) - Dear State Legislators Passing “Bathroom Bills,” Please. Please. For the love of God and your constituency, find a real problem to write bills about. Because transgender people in bathrooms are not causing any problems. None. Zero. My preference would be that you spend your energy addressing pressing concerns that threaten to destabilize society and possibly
- [Mothering, God](https://bmpvoices.com/mothering-god/) - The last time I saw my nineteen-year-old son, he grumbled at me in the middle of the public library: “Just stop yelling at me all the time. I’m sick of it. I’m finally living my life how I want, and you can’t control me!” For the record, I wasn’t yelling at him. I had told
- [Racism and the Myth of Scarcity](https://bmpvoices.com/racism-and-the-myth-of-scarcity/) - At a recent meeting of (mostly white) local clergy, we were asked whether or not our congregations would add their names to a “Black Lives Matter” banner. “When I brought it up at church,” said another pastor, “one of our members pointed out that LGBTQ people still face a great deal of oppression in this
- [The Weight of Love](https://bmpvoices.com/the-weight-of-love/) - Love is strong as death, Passion fierce as the grave. (Song of Solomon 8:6) We gathered at the park on a warm, sunny day—a day that would have been lovely if not for the urn that contained the ashes of my neighbors’ baby. I stood by the urn and looked out at the people seated
- [A Test of Character (Limit)](https://bmpvoices.com/a-test-of-character-limit/) - I did a book report on Great Expectations when I was in the fourth grade. Night after night, my father and I read Charles Dickens’ melancholy albeit intricate account of Pip. I was fascinated by the language used as much as the story itself. My teacher was shocked when I announced my report findings. It
- [Written in the Body](https://bmpvoices.com/written-in-the-body/) - Writing offers us an incomparable opportunity to disappear. I personally hold that words have no intrinsic meaning. What is it about the word “girl,” for example, that specifically encapsulates the idea of a girl? If the word “girl” really is inextricably, objectively tied to the concept of a girl, why do other people talk about
- [Lesbian Lit for Summer 2018](https://bmpvoices.com/lesbian-lit-for-summer-2018/) - At the beginning of each summer, I excitedly make a list of what I want to read in the two and a half months I am free from reading hundreds of student essays. Last summer, I read everything I could find by Octavia Butler and about the Vikings (no connection to Butler). The summer before
- [More Days of Sun Than Hail](https://bmpvoices.com/more-days-of-sun-than-hail/) - On the evening of Mother’s Day, I stood gazing proudly at my sixty-four square feet of raised garden. I love each plant: the green leafy broccolini, the heart-leafed French radishes, the purple-veined Russian kale, the climbing sweet peas, the glossy spinach and butterhead lettuce, the flowering yellow blossoms of the slender mustard greens, the clustered
- [On Guns, Again](https://bmpvoices.com/on-guns-again/) - The other day, as my wife and I drove north on Interstate 25 in our Mazda CX5 with our eleven-year-old daughter, Mitike, and our dog, Fable, in the backseat, I thought, “Why not get rid of all these safety features in our car?” I mean, really, our car would have been so much cheaper without
- [Imagine](https://bmpvoices.com/imagine/) - Trump, in a speech on Friday, February 23, 2018, to the Conservative Political Action Committee in Washington, D.C.: “Well-trained, gun-adept teachers and coaches [should carry firearms in schools]. I mean, I don’t want to have a hundred guards with rifles standing all over the school. You do a concealed carry permit. This would be a
- [The Teacher in April](https://bmpvoices.com/the-teacher-in-april/) - Every April, I become profoundly tired. Stacks of research papers teeter on my desk; my colleagues and I slog through hours and hours of standardized testing proctoring; the students are irritable and restless, and so am I. Every April, my mind hums with the same old question: What else could I be? What else am
- [On NaNoWriMo](https://bmpvoices.com/on-nanowrimo/) - This month is NaNoWriMo, a month in which the question “What’s your word count?” separates Nanowrimoes from the rest of the world. The word comes from fragments of the month’s title, National Novel Writing Month; the goal: write 50,000 words of a novel, forego more sleep than usual, win promotional prizes, and—well—have a novel draft
- [If Donald Trump Were Currently a Senior in High School](https://bmpvoices.com/if-donald-trump-were-currently-a-senior-in-high-school/) - Feedback on Donald’s final semester research paper, from his English teacher: Donald — While you have some interesting, unique ideas here, you have not always organized them in a way that makes your agenda or your principles evident. Also while you argue for change in the United States with great passion, you have not proved
- [Looking for Mrs. Whatsit in Dark Times](https://bmpvoices.com/looking-for-mrs-whatsit-in-dark-times/) - I love January best. I love storing the Christmas decorations and the tree downstairs in their respective boxes. I love rifling through all of our drawers and shelves and closets to find all that we no longer use: this year, we donated seven boxes full of toys and clothes to Goodwill. I even love beginning
- [Hjørne](https://bmpvoices.com/hjorne/) - The day after my wife, our daughter, and I returned from Scandinavia, we squeezed through the entrance gate to the Denver Pride Festival. Repeat: the day after my family and I returned from taking a trip only a small percentage of Americans are privileged enough to afford, we sat on a hillside and waved a
- [What I Want To Trace](https://bmpvoices.com/what-i-want-to-trace/) - In 2010, my father and his siblings discovered Ancestry.com, that website that allows a person to search birth, marriage, military, census, and death records to construct a family tree. And because an Ancestry.com tree becomes more accurate as users add more relationships to it, my father and my uncle and my aunts sent me, my
- [Note from Las Vegas](https://bmpvoices.com/note-from-las-vegas/) - At eleven p.m. on October 1, Meredith and I crouched behind a four-inch-wide metal partition in a boutique in the Aria, a casino-hotel just under a mile north of the Mandalay Bay Casino where, evidently, tens of people had just been shot by a mass murderer. We had learned this news in a women’s bathroom
- [The Slims River Is Gone](https://bmpvoices.com/the-slims-river-is-gone/) - This is true. Last spring, the Slims River in the Yukon’s Kluane National Park abruptly disappeared over the course of four days. A team of geologists and geoscientists that had been monitoring the retreat of the Kaskawulsh Glacier, the source of the Slims River, arrived to find dust where the mighty glacial river (one-third of
- [Returning to the Work](https://bmpvoices.com/returning-to-the-work/) - I haven’t exactly had writer’s block for the past month, but I haven’t been writing. This is a red flag. Until a month ago, I maintained a strict writing discipline: I’d wake at 4:30, eat my breakfast and read for an hour, and then sit down at my computer to begin. My goal: write for
- [Today’s Headlines](https://bmpvoices.com/todays-headlines/) - You’ve seen me before. I boarded your bus last week, in the afternoon. I was the one wearing round black headphones around my neck like a DJ; I was the one in the slouchy red shorts and the too-large white Nike tennis shoes. I was the black one. My two friends and I crowded into
- [We Are All Refugees](https://bmpvoices.com/we-are-all-refugees/) - We are all refugees. When I close my eyes, I stand trembling on the deck of a ship that has just arrived in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. It is 1881, and my hands shake because the journey across the Atlantic was impossibly rough: seasickness, an overcrowded steerage, rampant head lice and rats, inadequate toilet
- [The Vigil We Must Keep](https://bmpvoices.com/the-vigil-we-must-keep/) - Once, for ten years, I lived in Juneau, Alaska, where I learned about enduring darkness. In December in Juneau, the sun rises around 9 a.m. and sets at 3 p.m. Further north, my step-sister and her husband in Anchorage see an hour less of daylight than that, and my friends in Fairbanks glimpse the sun
- [RESIST](https://bmpvoices.com/resist/) - On November 9, early in the morning, I researched emigration to Canada. I explored whether Canada needs experienced psychologists like my wife (it does) and whether I could get a teaching license there (I could) and whether we could find an Ethiopian community for Mitike there (yes: Toronto). But I was wrong to try to
- [Now We Wait a Little Longer](https://bmpvoices.com/now-we-wait-a-little-longer/) - Every November, I plant tulip and daffodil and crocus bulbs in the cold, hard dirt of my garden. The bulbs are papery brown, with elfin points. I bought sixty this year, and for an entire morning, while my daughter and her friend tumbled nearby in the yard, I labored to dig six-inch holes in the
- [Starbucks and Race](https://bmpvoices.com/starbucks-and-race/) - In the winter of 2015, Starbucks tried to get its patrons to talk about race. Across the country, baristas in the iconic coffee shop slapped a black-and-white sticker onto cups: “Race Together.” They initiated dialogues; they committed publicly to hiring ten thousand disadvantaged youth and to open more stores in low-income neighborhoods. Their stock rose.
- [What’s at Stake in This Election](https://bmpvoices.com/whats-at-stake-in-this-election/) - In her whole life that our nine-year-old daughter Mitike can remember until this year, America has officially embraced hope and progress. After all, just the day before I brought her home from Ethiopia on August 29, 2008, the Democratic National Convention in Denver nominated Barack Obama as the nation’s first African American presidential candidate. On
- [Note to Self](https://bmpvoices.com/note-to-self/) - I decide to travel back in time and space to my farm in eastern Iowa, to warn my eighteen-year-old self that she’s a lesbian. I figure this information will save her quite a bit of pain and difficulty in her life, which has become my life, and I’m interested in a more unsullied path to
- [Genre-Bending Miss Dickinson](https://bmpvoices.com/genre-bending-miss-dickinson/) - It’s 1864. In the U.S. Hall of the House of Representatives, a gathered group of congressmen, weary from the bloody Civil War and despairing their fractured nation, pauses to listen to a twenty-two-year-old Quaker named Anna Elizabeth Dickinson. Dickinson steps to the podium, demure, clad in a conservative high-collared black dress. The men wait in
- [Just Like Any Other Couple](https://bmpvoices.com/just-like-any-other-couple/) - “Marriage responds to the universal fear that a lonely person might call out only to find no one there. It offers the hope of companionship and understanding and assurance that while both still live there will be someone to care for the other.” — Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, June 26, 2015 Getting married is
- [Better Than Carol’s World](https://bmpvoices.com/better-than-carols-world/) - It is so much better to live as a lesbian now, in 2016, than it was in 1952. That’s what I’ve been thinking ever since I immersed myself in the beautiful new lesbian film Carol last month. Carol (2015), that gorgeous film adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s novel The Price of Salt, portrays the blossoming love
- [Actual Reality](https://bmpvoices.com/actual-reality/) - On April Fool’s Day, Google unveiled its new (fake) product, the Cardboard Plastic headset, which enables its wearer to experience, in 4D, “Actual Reality.” The morning I read this satirical headline on my iPhone, I was standing in line with my fiancée, Meredith, and my daughter, Mitike, at the Orlando airport after three frenetic days
- [A March 2023 Letter to Americans from a Lesbian-American Refugee in Canada](https://bmpvoices.com/a-march-2023-letter-to-americans-from-a-lesbian-american-refugee-in-canada/) - This is a letter to those of you who have stayed. Please: listen to me, before it’s too late. I’m writing from the city of Vancouver, BC. The Canadians have been welcoming to the thousands of us who have fled across the border in the past seven years: immigrants, Muslims, dissenters, and those of us
- [Anger Is Energy](https://bmpvoices.com/anger-is-energy-solange-shows-the-importance-of-refusing-to-be-neutral/) - Solange Knowles may be Beyoncé’s younger sister, but that doesn’t mean she’s content to stay shadowed in a corner. Yes, Solange may not be a household brand, but I can’t help but think that she prefers it this way. This level of celebrity allows Solange to directly critique anti-blackness and white supremacy in America without
- [Black Girls in White Spaces](https://bmpvoices.com/black-girls-in-white-spaces/) - Although I don’t remember much about 1996, I do remember the Summer Olympics. I didn’t have much interest in Swimming or Track and Field. Rather, I was transfixed by the Women’s Gymnastic Team. The Magnificent Seven, as they were dubbed, consisted of Kerri Strug, Dominique Dawes, Amanda Borden, Amy Chow, Dominique Moceanu, Jaycie Phelps, and
- [The Illusion of Safe Spaces](https://bmpvoices.com/the-illusion-of-safe-spaces/) - To be a black woman online is to realize that any minute, your safe space can be compromised. The anonymity of the internet enables Red Pill fanatics and basement-dwelling trolls to spew hatred without serious repercussions. When the general public talks about the need to combat online bullying and harassment, the discussion rarely includes women
- [She’s Supa Dupa Fly](https://bmpvoices.com/shes-supa-dupa-fly/) - If there’s one female rap artist who has maintained an unapologetic dedication to authenticity and personal vision, it’s Missy Elliott. Although some members of the younger generation seemed to be unaware of the legendary MC, producer, singer, and songwriter until her 2015 Super Bowl performance with Katy Perry, Elliott has been instrumental to the evolving
- [When Being a Regular Black Girl Isn’t Enough](https://bmpvoices.com/when-being-a-regular-black-girl-isnt-enough/) - Beauty comes in all forms, but the institution of white supremacy demands that whiteness is the ideal. When Lil’ Kim posted new pictures to her Instagram, people immediately noticed a glaring change. In addition to the blonde lace front, Kim’s complexion was noticeably whiter, almost ghostly pale. The iconic rapper and former Junior M.A.F.I.A. member
- [Even Carefree Black Girls Get the Blues](https://bmpvoices.com/even-carefree-black-girls-get-the-blues/) - Rihanna has gone from Good Girl Gone Bad to bonafide style icon, pop culture heavyweight, and international superstar. In the past few years, she’s successfully turned her name into that of an influential tastemaker, a woman often imitated but never duplicated, who does what she wants, when she wants, without fear or worry of judgment
- [The Strong Black Woman Who Didn’t Exist](https://bmpvoices.com/the-strong-black-woman-who-didnt-exist/) - It’s always been assumed that I’m a “strong” person. The seductive dream of the Strong, Independent, Self-Sufficient Woman envelops unsuspecting black girls like veils of opium smoke. You keep killing yourself so that others will live, as if you are a brown-skinned Joan of Arc, riding high on a chorus of persuasive voices, fooled into
- [On Re-Reading](https://bmpvoices.com/on-re-reading/) - At my first parent-teacher conference at my daughter’s kindergarten, one of the newer instructors asked me why my daughter would often re-read books that were “too easy” for her. My daughter was already a strong reader by then. She’d taught herself, although we didn’t know about her new skill until sometime before her third birthday;
- [Sunday and Monday](https://bmpvoices.com/sunday-and-monday/) - The Calvin and Hobbes Lazy Sunday Book by Bill Watterson is one of the few books I’ve kept from my childhood. The book was a compilation of full-color, multi-panel Sunday strips from Watterson’s iconic cartoon, which ran from 1985 to 1995. At one point I had all of the Calvin and Hobbes collections. I don’t
- [Books for Another Time](https://bmpvoices.com/books-for-another-time/) - As a child, I loved Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie books. I began them when I started third grade. When people ask about formative books, I think first of this series: of these books that I read when I walked around the house, that I carried to the dinner table, that I
- [Think of England](https://bmpvoices.com/think-of-england/) - In fourth grade, I read Frances Hodgson Burnett’s 1911 novel The Secret Garden. I owned a mint-green Dell Yearling paperback copy that I must have bought with my allowance money. It was a book that likely inspired my childish love of the idea of England, of the idea of gardens and nature. In The Secret
- [Idaville](https://bmpvoices.com/idaville/) - I used to think of Encyclopedia Brown mystery stories as logical, serious, and solveable. I probably also believed in a tidy universe. On re-reading, I realize that I was completely and utterly wrong. I missed the humor, I didn’t see the absurdity, and I completely mistook the tone. And, as it turns out, I was
- [Virtuous Reality](https://bmpvoices.com/virtuous-reality/) - This summer, I spent some time re-reading Anne of Green Gables, a book that I turned to frequently in my childhood. It was easy to fall into it, but it also made me think of the lessons we learn—the habits we form—when we are young readers. In Lucy Maud Montgomery’s beloved classic, middle-aged siblings Marilla
- [War Rooms](https://bmpvoices.com/war-rooms/) - It is probably inevitable The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street, a new book about a large family living in New York City, is about real estate.* Karina Yan Glaser’s charming middle-grade contemporary opens about a week before Christmas when the Vanderbeekers learn that they are about to be kicked out of their beloved Harlem brownstone apartment.
- [Make Fun](https://bmpvoices.com/make-fun/) - Look, it’s been another long year, and my temptation this month is to quote blocks of funny passages from Gordon Korman’s 1981 comic middle-grade novel, I Want to Go Home, and just leave them here without analyzing my childhood or my feeelings. Humor can be a balm, an escape—all that delightful, uplifting crap. But what
- [Tall Tales, Short Tales](https://bmpvoices.com/tall-tales-short-tales/) - I was halfway through Astrid Lindgren’s Pippi Longstocking when I decided that I didn’t particularly want to re-read it anymore. Pippi, first published in Swedish in 1945, is the story of an irrepressible redheaded girl. She lives in a house by herself with a pet horse, a monkey named Mr. Nilsson, and a suitcase full
- [Quiet Work](https://bmpvoices.com/quiet-work/) - In Summer Light, Zibby Oneal’s 1985 book about a seventeen-year-old girl’s season of self-discovery, is one of the last young adult novels that I read as a young adult. In it, Kate Brewer, daughter of renowned painter Marcus, has been recovering from mononucleosis and writing a paper on The Tempest. Kate has a fractious relationship
- [Little Pieces](https://bmpvoices.com/little-pieces/) - When I was in (maybe) first grade, children’s book writer Robert Munsch came to my school and performed The Mud Puddle. In the story, Jule Ann puts on clean clothes—pants, shirt, socks, shoes—and goes outside on a sunny day, only to be jumped by a seemingly sentient mud puddle. She returns to her house, sopping
- [Bird of America](https://bmpvoices.com/bird-of-america/) - In fourth grade, my Language Arts teacher read us The Trumpet of the Swan, a children’s novel by acclaimed American writer E. B. White. The story opens when Montana boy Sam Beaver, on vacation in a remote part of Canada, discovers a nesting pair of swans. The boy saves the female swan—the pen—from a fox
- [Real Girl](https://bmpvoices.com/real-girl/) - At the beginning of Judy Blume’s Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, eleven-year-old Margaret Simon and her family move from New York to New Jersey just before Labor Day. The story takes place over the school year. We see Margaret adjusting to a new classes and new friends, including her next door neighbor, Nancy.
- [Secret Heroine](https://bmpvoices.com/secret-heroine/) - In E. L. Konigsburg’s From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, twelve-year-old Claudia Kincaid hatches a plan to run away from her home in Connecticut to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, taking along her money-grubbing younger brother, Jamie. The children roam the galleries during the day, blending in with
- [Home Alone Together](https://bmpvoices.com/home-alone-together/) - In Owl At Home, Arnold Lobel’s 1975 illustrated early reader, solitary Owl scolds winter for coming into his house. He is frightened by a creature under his covers, which turns out to be his feet. He makes himself cry in order to enjoy a pot of tear-water tea. He runs up and down the stairs
- [Problematic Fave](https://bmpvoices.com/problematic-fave/) - Central to Anne Stuart’s 1991 contemporary Southern Gothic romance, The Night of the Phantom are kidnappings, violence, fanaticism, revenge. There’s also attempted suicide, ableism and perhaps appropriative and exploitative depictions of race. Frankly, I lost count of possible issues one might have with this book because I got sucked in. Again. Let this serve as
- [Detective Stories](https://bmpvoices.com/detective-stories/) - I read Sad Cypress, one of Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot novels, several times while I was in junior high. It was probably my favorite book featuring the dapper, egotistical, foreign (to the English) sleuth. In Agatha Christie’s 1940 murder mystery, young and beautiful Elinor Carlisle stands accused of murdering young and beautiful Mary Gerrard. The
- [Two-World Problem](https://bmpvoices.com/two-world-problem/) - At the beginning of Robin McKinley’s 1982 young adult fantasy novel The Blue Sword, Harry Crewes has been living in a colonial desert outpost after the death of her parents. The Homeland, where Harry is from, is a thinly disguised Victorian England. The lone Homeland city of Istan shares uneasily a border with Damar, a
- [Dear Ellen Conford](https://bmpvoices.com/dear-ellen-conford/) - In Ellen Conford’s 1976 young adult novel, Dear Lovey Hart, I Am Desperate, freshman Carrie Wasserman finds herself writing an anonymous advice column for her high school newspaper. The column becomes wildly popular to the dismay of Carrie’s father, the school’s head guidance counselor. But Carrie finds her position difficult: she is falling for her
- [Herbs and Things](https://bmpvoices.com/herbs-and-things/) - Beverly Cleary, author of many funny, wise classics of children’s literature, turned one hundred years old on April 12. She is known for having created such characters as Ralph, the motorcycle mouse, Henry Huggins, and Ramona and Beatrice “Beezus” Quimby. I went through piles of Cleary’s books as a kid, but Ramona and Her Mother,
- [Sweet Valley and Canby Hall Revisited](https://bmpvoices.com/sweet-valley-and-canby-hall-revisited/) - Sweet Valley High and The Girls of Canby Hall were the two teen novel series I read and re-read from grimly and determinedly in my 80s and early 90s adolescence. Sweet Valley High, the storied Random House series, featured blonde twins, Elizabeth (the “good” one) and Jessica (the “not-so-good” one) Wakefield, living in the small
- [Fear and Self-Loathing in Atwood-land](https://bmpvoices.com/fear-and-self-loathing-in-atwood-land/) - I read Margaret Atwood’s 1976 novel Lady Oracle first as a seventeen-year-old, then as an earnest literature undergraduate. In this feminist satire, acclaimed Canadian poetess Joan Foster fakes her own death and flees to Italy in disguise when her multiple identities collide. Not only is Joan a sort of red-headed Enya of the literary world,
- [Subversions](https://bmpvoices.com/subversions/) - Subversions Subversions. I like the way the word tastes on my tongue. Subversions. As in, ways to act subversively. As in, small erosions of The Way Things Are. In the Online Etymology Dictionary, a “subversion” is a “physical destruction, demolition, ruination; [an] overthrow of a system or law.” The word comes from the Old French
- [In the Club](https://bmpvoices.com/in-the-club/) - Before Harry Potter sorting hats, before Sex in the City, Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club provided readers with a quartet of women with which to classify themselves. Were you: a Waverly, the ambitious former chess-champ overachiever? a Lena, the half-Chinese, half-Irish-American girl who became a passive spectator of her own life? a Rose, the

## Pages

- [Home](https://bmpvoices.com/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_fullwidth_header header_fullscreen=”on” background_overlay_color=”RGBA(0,0,0,0)” header_image_url=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/VOICES-TITLE-LOGO-TEST-BIGGER.png” _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” background_enable_color=”off” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Voices1-scaled.jpeg” background_position=”center_right” global_colors_info=”{}”][/et_pb_fullwidth_header][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”NaPoMo 2026″ _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” background_color=”#b8a992″ module_alignment=”center” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″][et_pb_row column_structure=”3_5,2_5″ make_equal=”on” _builder_version=”4.20.2″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”3_5″ _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_image src=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/poetrymonth-1554303770-27.png” alt=”National Poetry Month” title_text=”BMP celebrates National Poetry Month” align=”center” _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][/et_pb_image][et_pb_blurb title=”National Poetry Month 2026″ _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_level=”h2″ header_font=”|700|||||||”
- [National Poetry Month 2026](https://bmpvoices.com/national-poetry-month-2026/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”NaPoMo 2026″ _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” background_color=”#b8a992″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_image src=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/poetrymonth-1554303770-27.png” alt=”National Poetry Month” title_text=”BMP celebrates National Poetry Month” align=”center” _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][/et_pb_image][et_pb_blurb title=”Welcome to National Poetry Month 2026!” _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_level=”h2″ header_font=”|700|||||||” header_text_align=”center” header_text_color=”#FFFFFF” header_line_height=”1.4em” body_text_color=”#FFFFFF” body_line_height=”1.6em” background_layout=”dark” global_colors_info=”{}”] During these times of whistles, protests, and raising
- [National Poetry Month 2025](https://bmpvoices.com/national-poetry-month-2025/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”NaPoMo 2025″ _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” background_color=”#364947″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_image src=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/poetrymonth-1554303770-27.png” alt=”National Poetry Month” title_text=”BMP celebrates National Poetry Month” align=”center” _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][/et_pb_image][et_pb_blurb title=”National Poetry Month 2025″ _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_level=”h2″ header_font=”|700|||||||” header_text_align=”center” header_text_color=”#FFFFFF” header_line_height=”1.4em” body_text_color=”#FFFFFF” body_line_height=”1.6em” background_layout=”dark” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″] Happy National Poetry Month! At Brain Mill Press, we like
- [National Poetry Month 2024](https://bmpvoices.com/national-poetry-month-2024/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”NaPoMo 2023″ _builder_version=”4.21.0″ _module_preset=”default” background_color=”#4d7ad6″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_image src=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/poetrymonth-1554303770-27.png” alt=”National Poetry Month” title_text=”BMP celebrates National Poetry Month” align=”center” _builder_version=”4.20.2″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][/et_pb_image][et_pb_blurb title=”National Poetry Month 2024″ _builder_version=”4.21.0″ _module_preset=”default” header_level=”h2″ header_font=”|700|||||||” header_text_align=”center” header_text_color=”#FFFFFF” header_line_height=”1.4em” body_text_color=”#FFFFFF” body_line_height=”1.6em” global_colors_info=”{}”] Happy National Poetry Month! At Brain Mill Press, we like to celebrate all
- [The Afro YA](https://bmpvoices.com/the-afro-ya/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” background_color=”#480075″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.25.0″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”Roboto Condensed||||||||” text_text_color=”#FFFFFF” text_font_size=”66px” text_letter_spacing=”5px” hover_enabled=”0″ text_text_shadow_style=”preset2″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″] THE AFRO YA [/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_fullwidth_post_slider posts_number=”1″ include_categories=”18″ show_arrows=”off” show_pagination=”off” show_meta=”off” admin_label=”Fullwidth Post Slider” _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][/et_pb_fullwidth_post_slider][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” background_enable_color=”off” use_background_color_gradient=”on” background_color_gradient_stops=”#480075 0%|#000000 100%” background_color_gradient_start=”#480075″ background_color_gradient_end=”#000000″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row
- [National Poetry Month 2023](https://bmpvoices.com/national-poetry-month-2023/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”NaPoMo 2023″ _builder_version=”4.20.2″ _module_preset=”default” background_color=”#be3455″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_image src=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/poetrymonth-1554303770-27.png” alt=”National Poetry Month” title_text=”BMP celebrates National Poetry Month” align=”center” _builder_version=”4.20.2″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][/et_pb_image][et_pb_blurb title=”National Poetry Month 2023″ _builder_version=”4.20.2″ _module_preset=”default” header_level=”h2″ header_font=”|700|||||||” header_text_align=”center” header_text_color=”#FFFFFF” header_line_height=”1.4em” body_text_color=”#FFFFFF” body_line_height=”1.6em” global_colors_info=”{}”] Happy National Poetry Month! For poets and poetry lovers—and perhaps for those who
- [Portaging](https://bmpvoices.com/portaging/) - Makers on Making features printmakers, writers, knitters, crafters, painters, photographers, textile artists, and anyone else involved in art. These pieces delve into the psychology of making, the lessons we learn from success and (often more usefully) failure, and what it is to be a human authentically and emotionally involved as a maker in our world.
- [National Poetry Month 2016](https://bmpvoices.com/national-poetry-month-2016/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”NaPoMo 2017″ _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” background_color=”#b33f62″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_image src=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/poetrymonth-1554303770-27.png” alt=”National Poetry Month” title_text=”BMP celebrates National Poetry Month” align=”center” _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][/et_pb_image][et_pb_blurb title=”National Poetry Month 2016″ _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” header_level=”h2″ header_font=”|700|||||||” header_text_align=”center” header_text_color=”#FFFFFF” header_line_height=”1.4em” body_text_color=”#FFFFFF” body_line_height=”1.6em” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″] The theme of teaching and learning poetry, and our emphasis on
- [National Poetry Month 2017](https://bmpvoices.com/national-poetry-month-2017/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”NaPoMo 2017″ _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” background_color=”#b33f62″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_image src=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/poetrymonth-1554303770-27.png” alt=”National Poetry Month” title_text=”BMP celebrates National Poetry Month” align=”center” _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][/et_pb_image][et_pb_blurb title=”National Poetry Month 2017″ _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” header_level=”h2″ header_font=”|700|||||||” header_text_align=”center” header_text_color=”#FFFFFF” header_line_height=”1.4em” body_text_color=”#FFFFFF” body_line_height=”1.6em” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″] The theme of teaching and learning poetry, and our emphasis on
- [National Poetry Month 2018](https://bmpvoices.com/national-poetry-month-2018/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”NaPoMo 2018″ _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” background_color=”#1c393d” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_image src=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/poetrymonth-1554303770-27.png” alt=”National Poetry Month” title_text=”BMP celebrates National Poetry Month” align=”center” _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][/et_pb_image][et_pb_blurb title=”National Poetry Month 2018″ _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” header_level=”h2″ header_font=”|700|||||||” header_text_align=”center” header_text_color=”#FFFFFF” header_line_height=”1.4em” body_text_color=”#FFFFFF” body_line_height=”1.6em” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″] Maybe you have lines living in you. Maybe you’ve been walking
- [National Poetry Month 2019](https://bmpvoices.com/national-poetry-month-2019/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”NaPoMo 2019″ _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” background_color=”#ceb92c” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_image src=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/poetrymonth-1554303770-27.png” alt=”National Poetry Month” title_text=”BMP celebrates National Poetry Month” align=”center” _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][/et_pb_image][et_pb_blurb title=”National Poetry Month 2019″ _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” header_level=”h2″ header_font=”|700|||||||” header_text_align=”center” header_text_color=”#FFFFFF” header_line_height=”1.4em” body_text_color=”#FFFFFF” body_line_height=”1.6em” global_colors_info=”{}”] For this year’s National Poetry Month, Brain Mill Press & Voices
- [National Poetry Month 2022](https://bmpvoices.com/national-poetry-month-2022/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”NaPoMo 2022″ _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” background_color=”#1c393d” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_image src=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/poetrymonth-1554303770-27.png” alt=”National Poetry Month” title_text=”BMP celebrates National Poetry Month” align=”center” _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][/et_pb_image][et_pb_blurb title=”National Poetry Month 2022″ _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” header_level=”h2″ header_font=”|700|||||||” header_text_align=”center” header_text_color=”#FFFFFF” header_line_height=”1.4em” body_text_color=”#FFFFFF” body_line_height=”1.6em” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″] As the pandemic has continued into its second year, we at
- [National Poetry Month 2020](https://bmpvoices.com/national-poetry-month-2020/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”NaPoMo 2020″ _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” background_color=”rgba(224,153,0,0.63)” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_image src=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/poetrymonth-1554303770-27.png” alt=”National Poetry Month” title_text=”BMP celebrates National Poetry Month” align=”center” _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][/et_pb_image][et_pb_blurb title=”National Poetry Month 2020″ _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” header_level=”h2″ header_font=”|700|||||||” header_text_align=”center” header_text_color=”#FFFFFF” header_line_height=”1.4em” body_text_color=”#FFFFFF” body_line_height=”1.6em” global_colors_info=”{}”] For this year’s National Poetry Month at BMP Voices, we seek to celebrate
- [Ab Terra Flash Fiction](https://bmpvoices.com/ab-terra-flash-fiction/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default” background_color=”#FFFFFF” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Red-Planet-on-White-Background.png” background_size=”contain”][et_pb_fullwidth_post_title meta=”off” featured_image=”off” _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default” title_font=”Advent Pro||||||||” title_font_size=”40px” title_letter_spacing=”6px” background_color=”#FFFFFF” background_image=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Red-Planet-on-White-Background.png” background_size=”contain” text_orientation=”center” module_alignment=”center” height=”503px” title_text_shadow_style=”preset2″ text_shadow_style=”preset5″][/et_pb_fullwidth_post_title][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default” use_background_color_gradient=”on” background_color_gradient_start=”#ffffff” background_color_gradient_end=”#000000″][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_blog posts_number=”1″ include_categories=”140″ use_manual_excerpt=”off” show_more=”on” show_author=”off” show_date=”off” show_categories=”off” show_excerpt=”off” show_pagination=”off” _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default” header_font=”Advent Pro||||||||” header_text_align=”center” header_text_color=”#000000″ body_font=”Advent Pro||||||||” body_text_align=”center” body_text_color=”#E02B20″ text_orientation=”center”
- [Makers on Making](https://bmpvoices.com/makers-on-making/) - Makers on Making features printmakers, writers, knitters, crafters, painters, photographers, textile artists, and anyone else involved in art. These pieces delve into the psychology of making, the lessons we learn from success and (often more usefully) failure, and what it is to be a human authentically and emotionally involved as a maker in our world.
- [National Poetry Month 2021](https://bmpvoices.com/national-poetry-month-2021/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”NaPoMo 2021″ _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default” background_color=”#00457A”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_image src=”https://bmpvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/poetrymonth-1554303770-27.png” alt=”National Poetry Month” title_text=”BMP celebrates National Poetry Month” align=”center” _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default”][/et_pb_image][et_pb_blurb title=”National Poetry Month 2021″ _builder_version=”4.9.2″ _module_preset=”default” header_level=”h2″ header_font=”|700|||||||” header_text_align=”center” header_text_color=”#FFFFFF” header_line_height=”1.4em” body_text_color=”#FFFFFF” body_line_height=”1.6em”] Amanda Gorman inspired many on January 20th, with her inaugural poem “The Hill We Climb.” With her words,

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