September is a month of renewals and returns, but it’s also an opportunity for new beginnings. This month we’re delighted to showcase two exceptional emerging poets. Ide and Eliot both write verse that is distinctly their own, and we can’t wait for you to hear it!
IDE AMARI THOMPSON (he / they) is a Black and Queer Caribbean writer from Nassau, Bahamas. Ide is working on MLS degree from University of Illinois Urbana-Champagne and is a poetry MFA candidate at UMass Amherst, where they received honorable mentions for the Daniel and Merrily Glosband MFA Fellowship in Poetry and the Skofield Goeckel Award in 2021. Their written work has appeared in the PREE online journal, in Onyx magazine, a creative journal for diasporic Black writers based in the UK, and in the NE9 exhibition “The Fruit & The Seed” (2018) and “REFUGE” (2019), both exhibited by the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas, Stellium Literary Magazine, and most recently in Maple Tree Literary Supplement.
ELIOT CARDINAUX was born in Dayton, Ohio in 1984, and spent time growing up in Geneva, Switzerland. In addition to being a poet and translator, he is a pianist and composer working in the field of jazz and improvisation. He studied briefly at Manhattan School of Music, and Conservatorium van Amsterdam, before completing his degree in music at New England Conservatory. He went on to acquire an MFA in poetry from The University of Massachusetts Amherst. He has traveled to Denmark and Germany several times over the last decade to perform and record his poetry and music. At present, he has a trio with Will McEvoy and Max Goldman, a duo with Gary Fieldman, and is a member of the international ensemble Our Hearts as Thieves. His albums include American Thicket, Sweet Beyond Witness, Out of Our Systems, and Pavane. Eliot’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Jacket2, Café Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, Caliban Online, Talisman, Bloodroot, and Big Big Wednesday. His translations from the French of René Char have appeared in Tupelo Quarterly, and are forthcoming in Solstice. His debut poetry collection, On the Long Blue Night, was recently published by Dos Madres Press. Eliot is the founder of The Bodily Press, an independent chapbook press and record label. He has taught at UMass Amherst, and worked as a bookseller at Amherst Books.
Be sure to register for this reading at https://bit.ly/WTUISep2023 so you don’t add “Regret” to your list of September emotions.