Compressive Lines: A Rail Reading curated by Jessica Grim

makalani bandele is an Affrilachian Poet. He has received fellowships from the Cave Canem Foundation, Obsidian Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Kentucky Arts Council, Millay Colony, and Vermont Studio Center. His work has been published in several anthologies and widely online and in print literary journals, Washington Square Review, Prairie Schooner, and 32poems to name a few. ‘mak’ is also the author of the books hellfightin’ (Willow Books, 2011) and under the aegis of a winged mind, awarded the 2019 Autumn House Press Poetry Prize. His latest manuscript, (jopappy and the sentence-makers are) eponymous as funk, won Futurepoem’s 2022 Other Futures Award and is slated for publication in 2024.

Born in St. Paul, Minnesota, poet Laura Moriarty grew up in Cape Cod, Massachusetts and Northern California where she has lived since 1964. She attended UC Berkeley. She was the Director of the American Poetry Archives at the Poetry Center at San Francisco State University for many years. She has taught at Naropa University and Mills College. She was Deputy Director of Small Press Distribution for two decades. Her recent books include Personal Volcano, Who That Divines, A Tonalist, and A Semblance: Selected and New Poems, 1975-2007. Last February she had her first show of visual art, rapt glass, at Right Window in San Francisco. Her Witch Walks is forthcoming from Nightboat.

Poet Melanie Neilson’s books include Civil Noir (Roof Books), Natural Facts (Potes & Poets), and several chapbooks. Her poems are included in over 20 anthologies, most recently in Rage Baking: The Transformative Power of Flour, Fury, and Women’s Voices by Kathy Gunst and Katherine Alford (Simon & Schuster, 2020). She continues to collaborate on writing projects with Jessica Grim. Originally from San Diego, California, she lives in New York City.

Brian Kim Stefans is a poet, digital artist and theorist. His poetry publications include “Viva Miscegenation: New Writing”, What Is Said to the Poet Concerning Flowers, and Free Space Comix. Recent books include a collection of translations, Festivals of Patience: The Verse Poems of Arthur Rimbaud and Word Toys: Poetry and Technics, a series of essays concerning poetry and philosophy. Stefans is a professor in the English Department at UCLA.

Jessica Grim is author of Vexed (BlazeVox, &  /Ubu Editions), Fray (O Books), Locale (Potes & Poets), and The Inveterate Life (O Books). With Melanie Neilson she co-founded and co-edited Big Allis (1989 to 2000). Excerpts of a long-form collaboration with Neilson, The Autobiography of Jean Foos, have appeared in Bomb, Brooklyn Rail, Chicago Review, Conjunctions and Some. A recent collaboration with Melanie and Jean Foos, Alsop’s Tables, was published by Ragged Sky. She lives in Ohio.