Stacey Waite In Columbia Poetry Review No. 25
By Maggie Hellwig in Arts & Entertainment on Apr 12, 2012 6:20PM
Take this in:
"there was always something about the public bathroom doors, always the chalk of androgyny sticking in my throat as i'd walk toward the women's room with my mother. somehow i knew she wasn't bothered by the stick figure triangle skirt that indicated the path we were to take, the ways we were to interpret our bodies."
These are the opening lines of Stacey Waite's poem, "when the chalk of androgyny," from her first collection of poetry, the lake has no saint. While gender identity and sexuality are topics probed thoroughly in the book, the poems are truly about relationships, their fragile nature, and how they produce self-actualizations as well as self-consciousness. We're awaiting her forthcoming collection, Butch Geography, which may not be released from Tupelo Press until 2013.
In the meantime, Waite fans can relish the fact that the upcoming Columbia Poetry Review will feature her work. The no. 25 issue of Columbia College Chicago's student-edited review will be celebrated with a release party on April 26. Waite is headlining the event and we will hear readings from the other contributors as well.
Waite, an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Nebraska--Lincoln, has several chapbooks and her poetry has been displayed in Bloom, The Rattling Wall, Black Warrior Review, and Pinch. Her readings, while no current youtube video can do them justice, are full of vehement fervor and just edgy enough to get her "kicked out of Barnes & Noble."
The release reading will take place on Thursday, April 26, at Ferguson Hall: 600 S. Michigan Ave., Room 101, 5:30 p.m., FREE