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44 achingly eloquent poems from a young Cave Canem fellow: W.J. Lofton's verses explore Black queer Southern identity, grief, love, and intimacy while enduring and witnessing unfreedom in America
W.J. Lofton writes vivid, accessible poems that channel the energy, urgency, ambitions, joys, and sorrows of a young Black queer artist. They are about love and flirtation, sweet tea and hot sauce, God and family, life and death, police brutality and extrajudicial killings. His verses honor some of the young lives extinguished by these killings—Breonna Taylor, Kendrick Johnson, Ahmaud Arbery. He also pays tribute to some of the towering figures of Black culture who have come before him—Richard Pryor, Assata Shakur. His style is endlessly propulsive, informed by some of the Harlem Renaissance greats—Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks—but also transforming that rich tradition for the present day.
W.J. Lofton is an artist, a poet, and an activist based in Atlanta. The author of 2 previous poetry collections, he has been a Cave Canem fellow, an Arts and Social Justice fellow at Emory University, a poet-in-residence at 100WEST in Corsicana, Texas, and an artist-in-residence at Paint Love. He co-curates Rebellion: A Salon at For Keeps Books and hosts writing workshops for unhoused queer youth and patients at Grady Hospital’s Ponce De Leon Clinic. He was awarded the LEAP Grant by acclaimed director Ava DuVernay.
44 achingly eloquent poems from a young Cave Canem fellow: W.J. Lofton's verses explore Black queer Southern identity, grief, love, and intimacy while enduring and witnessing unfreedom in America
W.J. Lofton writes vivid, accessible poems that channel the energy, urgency, ambitions, joys, and sorrows of a young Black queer artist. They are about love and flirtation, sweet tea and hot sauce, God and family, life and death, police brutality and extrajudicial killings. His verses honor some of the young lives extinguished by these killings—Breonna Taylor, Kendrick Johnson, Ahmaud Arbery. He also pays tribute to some of the towering figures of Black culture who have come before him—Richard Pryor, Assata Shakur. His style is endlessly propulsive, informed by some of the Harlem Renaissance greats—Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks—but also transforming that rich tradition for the present day.
Author
W.J. Lofton is an artist, a poet, and an activist based in Atlanta. The author of 2 previous poetry collections, he has been a Cave Canem fellow, an Arts and Social Justice fellow at Emory University, a poet-in-residence at 100WEST in Corsicana, Texas, and an artist-in-residence at Paint Love. He co-curates Rebellion: A Salon at For Keeps Books and hosts writing workshops for unhoused queer youth and patients at Grady Hospital’s Ponce De Leon Clinic. He was awarded the LEAP Grant by acclaimed director Ava DuVernay.
