Porsha Olayiwola
Porsha Olayiwola is a native of Chicago who writes, lives and loves in Boston. Olayiwola is a writer, performer, educator and curator who uses afro-futurism and surrealism to examine historical and current issues in the Black, woman, and queer diasporas. She is an Individual World Poetry Slam Champion and the founder of the Roxbury Poetry Festival. Olayiwola is Brown University's 2019 Heimark Artist -In -Residence as well as the 2021 Artist-in-Residence at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. She is a 2020 poet laureate fellow with the Academy of American poets. Olayiwola earned her MFA in poetry from Emerson College and is the author of i shimmer sometimes, too. Olayiwola is the current poet laureate for the city of Boston. Her work can be found in or forthcoming from with TriQuarterly Magazine, Black Warrior Review, The Boston Globe, Essence Magazine, Redivider, The Academy of American Poets, Netflix, Wildness Press, The Museum of Fine Arts and elsewhere.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:
POETRY: “Chaste Duplex,” Triquarterly Press
POETRY: “Enquiry into The Lineage of Watermelons,” Triquarterly Press
POETRY: “Bring Me The Body,” Wildness Press
POETRY: “The Cops Behind Us, I Hold My Breath,” Wildness Press
POETRY: “If You Tell It Backwards,” Academy of American Poets
POETRY: “We Drink At The Attenuation Well,” Academy of American Poets
POETRY: “Notorious,” Academy of American Poets
POETRY: “The Electric Slide Is Not A Dance!”, Academy of American Poets
POETRY: “Twerk Villanelle,” Redivider Journal
POETRY: “Listen: My Right Hand is Covered in Blood,” Redivider Journal
POETRY: “Had My Parents Not Been Separated After My Father’s Traffic Stop, Arrest and Deportation,” Redivider Journal
POETRY: “Boston Ode,” City of Boston
POETRY: “How To Make Yourself Small.”, Up The Staircase Quarterly