Em Marie Kohl
st. marks
—after the poetry project’s new year’s day marathon, 2024
on the first
i kneel on my puffer
and crane my neck to the pulpit
of the poetry project
kay gabriel queer arch angle
watches over us from the rafters
arms folded into wings on railing
cheek resting on palms
in the bathroom line
someone hands me a tampon
calls me sister i don't correct her
as a teen family compared
my character to great aunt charity
the nun; said she was a-radical, a-poet, too
i keep her writing
tucked behind abi-karam at home
look how far we've come
cecilia gentili sardonic siren stands
before our rapture collective blessed-art-thou
trans bodies, i
cant help but wonder if
im bleeding through my base layer
certain if i can smell my shedding through this mask so must others
as eileen myles shouts eat my ocean
into the crowd yearning
for a Free Palestine
midnight mass is freak hour
where we are pressed
to name the difference
between enemy & friend
assured we will get it wrong
we make silent promises to stay
those who remain remain in attempts
to forget the weight
of beginnings and ends
_____
Statement of Homage
The Poetry Project is a fixture for the New York City poetic community as a space that actively uplifts and engages in radical care and creativity. On a personal level, The Poetry Project has seeded and fostered some of my closest poetic friends and collaborators. The Poetry Project New Years Day marathon is an all-day event of poetic performances which highlights the project’s capacity to interweave the cross-generational, diverse, vibrancy of contemporary poets. And when one attends this annual event they infuse themselves with a living archive that is over a half-century old.
The Poetry Project
The Poetry Project was established in 1966 as a “counter-hierarchical, radically open space and community” for poetic creatives.
January 1st 2024 celebrated The Poetry Project’s 50th annual New Year's Day Marathon. This year’s marathon was the last event managed under the direction of former Executive Director Kyle Dacuyan. The 2024 marathon exemplified the interdisciplinary vision Dacuyan brought to The Poetry Project. For over 13 consecutive hours, multimedia performances in poetics, visuals, movement, and music filled the St. Mark’s sanctuary – as hundreds of bodies sat, knelt, stood, attended via live stream, and waited outside for entry.
The community gathered bore witness to, and echoed, the call by multiple performers for a permanent “Ceasefire Now” in solidarity with the Palestinian people. This mindful curation of radical poetic politics reflected The Poetry Project’s October 2023 statement “[of] total solidarity with the people of Palestine, who have suffered under the genocidal violence of the Western imperial and Zionist powers for more than a century...” A statement, which Dacuyan recommitted The Poetry Project to on New Year’s Day.
The respect each member of The Poetry Project team had for one another was palpable throughout St. Marks and further affirmed what a sacred space the project is. At the close of the marathon, after the hours waned from January 1st to 2nd, Dacuyan was presented with a bouquet of flowers and farewell cake by Editorial Director, Kay Gabriel and Program Director, Laura Henriksen. The Poetry Project team that had worked so tirelessly to present the day’s performances came out from behind soundboards and back rooms to share in the celebrations. The audience members that remained got up from their seats, and all community members interweaved together in hellos and goodbyes.
It was just after 1 am as I slid into the back seat of a taxi on the desolate 2nd Ave. Pulling the car door closed I glanced back towards The Poetry Project. I felt as St. Marks looked – illuminated from the inside out. In order of poem mention:
[all bios sic www.poetryproject.com]
Kay Gabriel is a writer and organizer based in New York. She’s the author of A Queen in Bucks County (Nightboat, 2022) and Kissing Other People or the House of Fame (Nightboat, 2023). With Andrea Abi-Karam, she co-edited We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics (Nightboat, 2020). Her books have been nominated for Lambda Literary and Publishing Triangle awards. She’s received fellowships from PEN America, Lambda Literary, The Poetry Project, and Princeton University, where she received her PhD in 2020. She’s performed for audiences at Performance Space, Small Press Traffic, Poetic Research Bureau, the Berlin poesiefestival, and Berkeley’s Lunch Poets series. Kay has taught courses at Princeton, NYU-Gallatin, Cooper Union, Wendy’s Subway, and the Bard Microcollege at Brooklyn Public Library. She’s writing her first novel. Kay is the Editorial Director at The Poetry Project, where she edits the Poetry Project Newsletter. Kay is represented by Criss Moon at William Morris Endeavour.
Andrea Abi-Karam is a trans, arab-american poet-performer cyborg. They are the author of EXTRATRANSMISSION (Kelsey Street Press, 2019) and with Kay Gabriel, they co-edited We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics (Nightboat Books, 2020). Their second book, Villainy (Nightboat Books, Sept 2021) reimagines militant collectivity in the wake of the Ghost Ship Fire and the Muslim Ban. They are currently working on a poet's novel.
Cecilia Gentili was an advocate, organizer, and storyteller working at the intersections of sex work, immigrant rights, incarceration issues, and trans liberation. As a performer Cecilia starred as Ms. Orlando in the hit FX Show Pose. She also performed in her one-woman show The Knife Cuts Both Ways and in countless storytelling events across the country. Cecilia recently published her epistolary memoir Faltas: Letters to Everyone in My Hometown Who Isn’t My Rapist (Little Puss, 2022), which won the 2023 Stonewall Book Award.
Cuthwulf Eileen Myles came to New York from Boston in 1974 to be a poet, subsequently a novelist, public talker, and art journalist. A Sagittarius, their twenty books include evolution (poems), Afterglow (a dog memoir), a 2017 re-issue of Cool for You, I Must Be Living Twice/new and selected poems, and Chelsea Girls. Eileen is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Andy Warhol/Creative Capital Arts Writers grant, four Lambda Book Awards, the Shelley Prize from the PSA, and a poetry award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. In 2016, Myles received a Creative Capital grant and the Clark Prize for excellence in art writing. In 2019 they’ll be teaching at NYU and Naropa University and they live in New York and Marfa, TX.
-On March 2024, The Poetry Project announced Nicole Wallace as Interim Executive Director.
____
Em Marie Kohl (they/she) is a neurodivergent white queer creative living in Lenapehoking (Brooklyn, NY), whose personal and community practices move from a trauma-informed center. Em’s current practice is in dialogue with loneliness-isolation & its redress, access & accessibility, cosmic ecology and love. Their writing can be found in Everybody Press Review, Pom Pom Press, The Ana, Bullshit Lit, and Inkwell amongst others. Em’s most current cross-discipline project Waves; a study in light, sound, and movement was a collaborative happening that included meditation, poetry, video, and synth performance by twenty-five artists, including Kohl. Every first Thursday you can find Em co-hosting exquisites queer poetry readings alongside danilo machado. exquisites also holds nomadic writing workshops throughout Brooklyn and publishes an anthology twice a year. Em is also a trauma- and hatha-informed yoga teacher, a community programmer for Aberdeen Community Garden, and an Advisory Board member for the compost nonprofit BK ROT. Em builds community through mutual care and an openness towards continual
growth.