Chrysanthemum
Chrysanthemum is a poet, a performance artist, and a public historian. She is the winner of a 2023 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, a Kundiman Fellow, and the recipient of Lambda Literary's 2023 Justin Chin Memorial Scholarship. She serves as Co-Director of the Providence Poetry Slam, one of the oldest slam venues in the nation.
She broke ground in 2016 as the first trans woman finalist of the Women of the World Poetry Slam, and her teams were champions of the Rustbelt Regional Poetry Slam and the inaugural FEM Slam. Through a MacColl Johnson Fellowship from the Rhode Island Foundation, she organized the Vanishing Point Writing Retreat to connect Asian poets in diaspora through collaborative, peer-led instruction. At the American Repertory Theater's OBERON, she and Justice Ameer debuted ANTHEM, an interdisciplinary show weaving stories, music, and media arts to explore histories of trans survival.
Chrysanthemum was born to Vietnamese parents in Oklahoma City, where she came of age around the NW 39th Street gayborhood & Asian American enclave. She is developing her debut collection of poems, which explores contradictions, deletions, and distortions in queer archives by reckoning with legal, medical, and military histories of essentialism.
Selected publications and performances
ESSAY: “How Do You Create Community Out of a Rainbow of Difference?” The Nation
ESSAY: “When Remembering Stonewall, We Need to Listen to Those Who Were There,” Them
POETRY: “Binge,” Muzzle Magazine
POETRY: “Behold! A Spectacle” & “On Using the Trans Panic Defense,” The Offing
“I Don’t Even Like Sports,“ Ours Poetica, Curated by Sarah Kay and Charlotte Abotsi
“On (Not) Forgiving My Mother”, Finals at Rustbelt Regional Poetry Slam 2016
“Biological Woman (After Maya Angelou)”, Finals at Women of the World Poetry Slam 2018
Topics addressed in readings and performances:
Asian American and Vietnamese diaspora
LGBTQ+ and transgender histories
Queer liberation and justice
Empire, censorship, and language
Performance poetry and performance art
Politics of health, science, and pathology
Sample performance: Visibility Isn’t Enough: Public History as Poetry
Memory isn’t perfect. Contrary to headlines, the “unprecedented” attacks on trans communities are anything but. While the language to describe sex and gender changes across time and culture, what can the past tell us about today and the futures we’re moving toward? Join Chrysanthemum as she excavates messy contradictions that arise as we assemble, retrieve, and commemorate histories of sexual and gender variance.
This performance includes her reading poetry, which she intersperses with personal narratives and historical context. She approaches all events as an interactive conversation and an opportunity to connect with community members.
sample workshop: Dangerous Lexicons of Sex, Gender & Politics
The state demands our “legal sex”, suggesting the inverse must exist: unlawful sex. Language shapes our reality by codifying gender and sex — dictionaries recognize emergent vocabularies, diagnostic manuals outline rigid definitions, and new laws spell out restrictive realities. However, this language engenders lethal consequences, persisting across decades, cultures, and locales.
This poetry workshop is open to all experiences. Participants will study work from BIPOC and LGBTQ+ poets as we confront historical, legal, and found texts.
