Anastacia-Renee (She/They), former Jack Straw 2020 Curator and Seattle Civic Poet, is an award-winning writer, curator, interdisciplinary artist, and speaker. She is the author of Side Notes from the Archivist (HarperCollins/Amistad), selected as a New York Public Library Best Book of 2023 and feature of PBS.org’s, My Brief But Spectacular Life on Poetry and Legacy. She is also the author of (v.) (Black Ocean), and Forget It. (Black Radish). and Here In The (Middle) of Nowhere (HarperCollins /Amistad). Anastacia-Renee is the recipient of the James W. Ray Distinguished Artist Award prize in literature and, she was selected by NBC News as part of the list of “Queer Artist of Color Dominate 2021’s Must See LGBTQ Art Shows,” for “(Don’t Be Absurd) Alice in Parts,” mixed media installation at the Frye Art Museum.

2024 Jack Straw Alumni Poetry Series:

Side Notes from the Archivist is a preservation of Black culture viewed through a feminist lens. The Archivist leads readers through poems that epitomize youthful renditions of a Black girl coming of age in Philadelphia’s pre-funk ’80s; episodic adventures of “the Black Girl” whose life is depicted through the white gaze; and selections of verse evincing affection for self and testimony to the magnificence within Black femme culture at-large.

The Black Woman as an Altar

1.
lay your white flowers on
her altar let them be thorny
& thick & full of insects to honor her life

1. a
let them (the flowers) be fragrantly overwhelmingly to represent
the way she blooms across a
hardwood floor & cannot be
contained even inside a flared
nostril

2.
place or put or pour a glass of room temperature water because the black woman is always seeking balance (ain’t she) a woman always told she’s too hot or too cold has to be excellent & never in between.

2.a
make the room temperature water all dreadlocked goldilocks & just right. if the water spills let it run down the length of the altar as a sign of continuous flow

3.
write a letter to womb    call it magical    call it home    call it hers   call it god (but hide this letter in case the government decides to step in)

3.a
draw a sketch of stretch marks & label each one a new constellation   make her navel a moon inside a moon inside a moon & call that moon alpha

4.
if she died by a mob or a man or murder pray she will be merciful that no one will be the weight of her own omega

2020 Writers Program (Curator)

2014 Writers Program

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