Through the work of poets and visual artists Anaïs Duplan and Golden, we are offered the opportunity to see this world clearly—which is to say in history and in relation—as a way to envision another, a liberation beyond accomplishment, a nation so “new new new” it’s no nation at all.
We encourage enthusiastic readers and listeners to engage more deeply with Anaïs Duplan's work by purchasing his books. Duplan's Blackspace: On the Poetics of an Afrofuture is available from Black Ocean and Take This Stallion from Brooklyn Arts Presse.
Anaïs Duplan is a trans* poet, curator, and artist. He is the author of a book of essays, Blackspace: On the Poetics of an Afrofuture (Black Ocean, 2020), a full-length poetry collection, Take This Stallion (Brooklyn Arts Press, 2016), and a chapbook, Mount Carmel and the Blood of Parnassus (Monster House Press, 2017). He has taught poetry at the University of Iowa, Columbia University, Sarah Lawrence College, and St. Joseph’s College. In 2016, he founded the Center for Afrofuturist Studies, an artist residency program for artists of color, based at Iowa City’s artist-run organization Public Space One.
Golden (they/them) is a black gender-nonconforming trans-femme photographer and poet raised in Hampton, VA, currently residing in Boston, MA. Golden is the recipient of a Pink Door Fellowship (2017/2019), an Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Luminaries Fellowship (2019), the Frontier Award for New Poets (2019), and a Pushcart Prize nomination (wildness, 2019 & Glass Poetry, 2020). Their work has been featured on/at the Shade Journal, the Offing, wildness, Button Poetry, Buzzfeed, i-D, Interview Magazine, & elsewhere. Golden holds a BFA in Photography from New York University (2018) and is currently a City of Boston Artist-in-Residence (2020-2021). Instagram: goldenthem_. Twitter: goldenthem. Website: goldengoldengolden.com.