Joey De Jesus

Last updated

Joey De Jesus is an American writer, performer, community activist, and political candidate.

Contents

Their work includes the poetry collection NOCT: The Threshold of Madness, which was a selection of the 2019 Atlas Review chapbook contest, and the poetry collection HOAX, forthcoming from The Operating System in 2020. [1] [2] They have received numerous awards and fellowships for their work, including a 2020 ArtFP grant from BRIC Arts Media, and a 2017 New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship. [3] [4]

De Jesus is a Democrat in New York City and a former candidate for New York State Assembly District 38. [5]

Early life and education

De Jesus grew up in to a working-class family in Soundview, New York, and as a child attended Ethical Culture Fieldston School. [6] After graduating from Oberlin College, De Jesus went on to earn two master's degrees in poetry from Sarah Lawrence College and performance studies from New York University.

Career

De Jesus's poems have been published widely, including in The Brooklyn Rail, Drunken Boat, The Academy of American Poets, Guernica, Brooklyn Magazine, and elsewhere.

In 2017, De Jesus's work was part of a group exhibition at the New Museum. [7] That same year, they received the NYFA fellowship.

In 2019, De Jesus received an ArtFP grant from BRIC Arts Media. [3] The ensuing project, HOAX, was open for digital exhibition in April 2020, and focused, according to the press release, on "intersections of poetry (concrete, procedural, and lyric), interactive technology, mysticism, and performance... [making] a living book in sections" [8]

Also in 2019, De Jesus's chapbook NOCT: The Threshold of Madness won the 2019 Atlas Review open submission prize. The chapbook started in 2016 as a hybrid project centering on anti-Blackness and an erasure of a how-to book on black magic, and was profiled in VIDA: Women in Literary Arts. [9] According to series editor Natalie Eilbert, the resulting book features "language... at once devastating as it is curated by a mastermind. Here, agency is pushed under the lens as with everything else." [10]

From 2017 to 2019, De Jesus served as a founder and curator (with Shanekia Mcontosh) of the TRIPTYCH performance series at Basilica Hudson's annual Soundscape festival. [11]

De Jesus currently serves as an adjunct lecturer at Borough of Manhattan Community College. [12]

In 2020, De Jesus's debut collection, HOAX, is slated to be published with The Operating System. The collection is cross-genre and spread out across several different mediums, including a book of ekphrastic poems drawing on artist Yoshitaka Amano's tarot deck, an astrological divination chart, several laser-cut leather scrolls, and a series of prayer poems, among other components. [13]

Political career

In fall 2019, De Jesus announced their candidacy for State Assembly, running against incumbent Democrat Michael G. Miller and challenger Jenifer Rajkumar on a platform of a Statewide Homes Guarantee, reducing NYPD enrollment, and supporting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. Reporting on the campaign, City & State referred to De Jesus as "the candidate with the most left-leaning platform" in the Assembly race. [5]

In October 2019, De Jesus spoke as a representative of the Ridgewood Tenants Union at a Queens Community Board 5 meeting, arguing the importance of a planned homeless shelter in the area, against local criticism. [14]

In November 2019, De Jesus organized against the presence of a Department of Homeland Security armored-truck-based arrest in the neighborhood, declaiming it in the Queens Daily Eagle . [15]

In March 2020, De Jesus gathered enough signatures to be placed on the ballot for the state primary. [16]

Personal life

De Jesus identifies as "the only genderqueer anti-capitalist [candidate] running for State Assembly." [17] Since 2015, De Jesus has lived in Ridgewood, Queens. [18]

In addition to their political work, De Jesus serves as poetry co-editor for Apogee Journal. [19]

De Jesus is the survivor of a home invasion, which they trace to the formation of their identity as a poet. [6] [ clarification needed ]

He is also a member of the Democratic Socialists of America [20]

Bibliography

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Glendale, Queens</span> Neighborhoods of Queens in New York City

Glendale is a neighborhood in the west-central portion of the New York City borough of Queens. It is bounded by Forest Hills to the east, Ridgewood to the west, Woodhaven to the south, and Middle Village to the north.

Russell Edson was an American poet, novelist, writer, and illustrator. He was the son of the cartoonist-screenwriter Gus Edson.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ridgewood, Queens</span> Neighborhood of Queens in New York City

Ridgewood is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Queens. It borders the Queens neighborhoods of Maspeth to the north, Middle Village to the east, and Glendale to the southeast, as well as the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Bushwick to the southwest and East Williamsburg to the west. Historically, the neighborhood straddled the Queens-Brooklyn boundary.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kwame Dawes</span> Ghanaian academic, poet, editor, critic (born 1962)

Kwame Senu Neville Dawes is a Ghanaian poet, actor, editor, critic, musician, and former Louis Frye Scudder Professor of Liberal Arts at the University of South Carolina. He is now Professor of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and editor-in-chief at Prairie Schooner magazine.

Jeffrey McDaniel is an American poet. He has published six books of poetry, most recently Holiday in the Islands of Grief. He is the recipient of a creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. His writing has been included in Ploughshares, The Best American Poetry 1994, The Best American Poetry 2010, The Best American Poetry 2019, and The New Young American Poets, as well as on the National Endowment for the Arts website. He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aimee Nezhukumatathil</span> American poet

Aimee Nezhukumatathil is an American poet and essayist. Nezhukumatathil draws upon her Filipina and Malayali Indian background to give her perspective on love, loss, and land.

Mộng-Lan is a Vietnamese-born American writer, visual artist, musician, dancer, and educator. Former Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, Fulbright Scholar, she has published seven books of poetry & artwork, three chapbooks, has won numerous prizes such as the Juniper Prize and the Pushcart Prize. Poems have been included in international and national anthologies such as Best American Poetry Anthology and several Norton anthologies. Her books include: Song of the Cicadas ; Why is the Edge Always Windy?; Tango, Tangoing: poems & art; One Thousand Minds Brimming, 2016; and Dusk Aflame: poems & art, 2018. Her latest music album releases include Arrabal de Tango: Tango por Siempre, voice & guitar, 2020; Perfumas de Amor, de Argentina y Viet Nam, , 2018; New Orleans of My Heart, jazz piano, 2019; Dreaming Orchid: Poetry & Jazz Piano, 2016. www.monglan.com

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Madeline DeFrees</span> American poet

Madeline DeFrees was an American poet, teacher, and Roman Catholic nun.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lloyd Schwartz</span> American poet and professor (born 1941)

Lloyd Schwartz is an American poet, and the Frederick S. Troy Professor of English Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Boston. He was the classical music editor of The Boston Phoenix, a publication that is now defunct. He is Poet Laureate of Somerville, Massachusetts (2019-2021), Senior Music Editor at New York Arts and the Berkshire Review for the Arts, and a regular commentator for NPR's Fresh Air.

Elizabeth "Betsy" Sholl is an American poet who was poet laureate of Maine from 2006 to 2011 and has authored nine collections of poetry. Sholl has received several poetry awards, including the 1991 AWP Award, and the 2015 Maine Literary Award, as well as receiving fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Maine Arts Commission.

Noelle Kocot is an American poet. They are the author of nine full-length collections of poetry, including Ascent of the Mothers ,'God's Green Earth, Phantom Pains of Madness, Soul in Space, The Bigger WorldSunny Wednesday, "Poem for the End of Time and Other Poems", The Raving Fortune and 4

Joy Katz is an American poet who was awarded a 2011 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for Poetry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Samiya Bashir</span> American writer

Samiya A. Bashir is an American lesbian poet and author. Much of Bashir's poetry explores the intersections of culture, change, and identity through the lens of race, gender, the body and sexuality. She is currently associate professor of creative writing at Reed College in Portland, Oregon.

Wendy Barker was an American poet. She was Poet-in-Residence and the Pearl LeWinn Chair of Creative Writing at the University of Texas at San Antonio, where she taught since 1982.

Molly Fisk is an American poet and radio commentator. She has been teaching writing since 1994 and runs the on-line workshop Poetry Boot Camp. Her most recent book is Naming Your Teeth: Even More Observations from a Working Poet. She was honored as an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow in 2019.

Miriam Bird Greenberg is an American poet. She is author of four poetry collections: In the Volcano's Mouth, which won the 2015 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize from the University of Pittsburgh Press, the chapbooks All night in the new country and Pact-Blood, Fever Grass ; and the limited-edition letterpress artist book The Other World, which won the 2019 Center for Book Arts Chapbook Prize, designed in collaboration with Keith Graham. She was awarded a 2013 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship in poetry, a Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University, a fellowship from the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, and a 2010 Ruth Lilly Fellowship from The Poetry Foundation. Her poems have appeared in magazines such as Granta, Missouri Review, The Baffler, and Poetry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jenifer Rajkumar</span> American politician

Jenifer Rajkumar is an American politician. A Democrat, she is a member of the New York State Assembly from the 38th district, representing Queens neighborhoods of Glendale, Ozone Park, Richmond Hill, Ridgewood, and Woodhaven. She was the first Indian-American woman ever elected to a New York State Office.

Candace Hill-Montgomery is an African-American multi-disciplinary artist and writer. Lower Manhattan was the subject matter of much of her early work. She works in photography, mixed-media collage, and watercolors.

Maureen Therese Seaton was an American lesbian poet, memoirist, and professor of creative writing. She authored fifteen solo books of poetry, co-authored an additional thirteen, and wrote one memoir, Sex Talks to Girls, which won the 2009 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir/Biography. Seaton's writing has been described as "unusual, compressed, and surrealistic," and was frequently created in collaboration with fellow poets such as Denise Duhamel, Samuel Ace, Neil de la Flor, David Trinidad, Kristine Snodgrass, cin salach, Niki Nolin, and Mia Leonin.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joseph O. Legaspi</span> American poet

Joseph O. Legaspi is an American poet. He is the author of two full length poetry collections and two full-length poetry chapbooks.

References

  1. ↑ "2019 Chapbook Winners | Atlas Review". Archived from the original on 2020-05-29. Retrieved 2020-04-25.
  2. ↑ "Seed Catalog: Welcome OS Class of 2020 | The Operating System Blog". Archived from the original on 2020-08-07. Retrieved 2020-04-25.
  3. 1 2 "Congratulations to 2019-2020 ArtFP Artists | BRIC". 25 July 2019. Archived from the original on 2020-08-05. Retrieved 2020-04-25.
  4. ↑ "Directory of Artist Fellows and Finalists | New York Fellowship for the Arts" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2021-11-29. Retrieved 2020-04-25.
  5. 1 2 "Who's Facing a 2020 primary challenge in the state legislature? | City & State New York". Archived from the original on 2020-04-26. Retrieved 2020-04-25.
  6. 1 2 "Interview of Joey De Jesus | La Bloga". 10 July 2017. Archived from the original on 2020-09-29. Retrieved 2020-04-25.
  7. ↑ "RAGGA NYC: All the threatened and delicious things joining one another | e-flux". Archived from the original on 2018-04-24. Retrieved 2020-04-25.
  8. ↑ "Joey De Jesus - HOAX | BRIC" . Retrieved 2020-04-25.
  9. ↑ "Voices of Bettering American Poetry, Vol 2: Joey De Jesus | VIDA: Women in Literary Arts". 4 March 2018. Archived from the original on 2020-09-30. Retrieved 2020-04-25.
  10. ↑ "NOCT: The Threshold of Madness | The Atlas Review" . Retrieved 2020-04-25.[ permanent dead link ]
  11. ↑ "Basilica Hudson Soundscape: Tritpych | Basilica Hudson". Archived from the original on 2020-02-09. Retrieved 2020-04-25.
  12. ↑ "Joseph De Jesus | BMCC" . Retrieved 2020-04-25.[ permanent dead link ]
  13. ↑ "HOAX - Joey De Jesus | The Operating System". Archived from the original on 2020-02-10. Retrieved 2020-04-25.
  14. ↑ "CB5 Leaders asked to step down after shelter hearing | Queens Ledger". Archived from the original on 2019-10-28. Retrieved 2020-04-25.
  15. ↑ "Federal agents in armored military vehicle make arrest in Ridgewood" . Retrieved 2020-04-25.
  16. ↑ "If They Can't Knock Doors, How Do Candidates Get Face Time? | City and State NY". Archived from the original on 2020-04-24. Retrieved 2020-04-25.
  17. ↑ "Tweet | DeJesusSaves". Archived from the original on 2020-05-03. Retrieved 2020-04-25.
  18. ↑ "A Poem From Joey De Jesus | Brooklyn Magazine". 14 November 2016. Archived from the original on 2020-09-24. Retrieved 2020-04-25.
  19. ↑ "Masthead | Apogee Journal". Archived from the original on 2020-05-11. Retrieved 2020-04-25.
  20. ↑ Joey De Jesus [@DeJesusSaves] (June 3, 2020). "Yes, I'm DSA duespaying member, and very much aligned with and following the lead of & learning from the @NYCDSA_Climate despite not being active in their planning. I hold socialist beliefs but am more comfortable identifying as anti-capitalist and anti-settler-colonial" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.