Ailish's profile
I am the author of Dark~Sky Society (2014), which Greg Tate called "verse.. busted loose," and Bird in the Head (2005), selected by Jean Valentine for the Center for Book Arts chapbook award. Individual poems have been featured in Bill Moyers' "Civic Poetry" specials, selected for the Academy of American Poets' "Read This Poem" project, included in journals such as Agni, American Poetry Review, Blackbird, Harvard Review Online, Ploughshares, POETRY, The Poetry Review (UK), The Rumpus, and chosen for many anthologies, most recently, All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis (2020), edited by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine Wilkinson. My poems often address the surreality of human experience and of social change, influenced by my growing up white in majority-black Washington DC, and in my mother's home country, Ireland.
In addition to page poetry, I've been invited to compose in response to Fred Moten (in ythm, 2016), and commissioned by the jazz-poetry band Heroes are Gang Leaders for their tribute to Amiri Baraka, as well as contributing to their albums, Highest Engines / Near Higher Engineers and Flukum (Fast Speaking Music, 2015 and 2017). I've featured at Bowery Poetry Club in New York, Busboys and Poets in Washington DC, and the Creative Alliance, here in Baltimore, as well as at numerous bookstores, poetry festivals, and universities.
My work is greatly influenced by, and indebted to, global traditions of poets in the public square. I've learned much from being included in dialogues or panels on decolonial poetics at venues including the Baltimore Museum of Art, Naropa University, Cambridge University (UK), and Poetry Ireland. And from collaborations in Baltimore, such as co-editing with Olu Butterfly a special issue of The Urbanite, co-curating a "Poetry as Community" seies at Goucher College, and writing essays that have appeared in Boston Review and the anthology, A Sense of Regard: Essays on Poetry and Race, as well as many other places.
I'm fortunate to have received support from the Baltimore Commission for the Arts and Humanities, MacDowell, the Maryland State Arts Council, and Yaddo, and I teach in the Peace Studies and Integrated Arts Studies programs at Goucher College.
In addition to page poetry, I've been invited to compose in response to Fred Moten (in ythm, 2016), and commissioned by the jazz-poetry band Heroes are Gang Leaders for their tribute to Amiri Baraka, as well as contributing to their albums, Highest Engines / Near Higher Engineers and Flukum (Fast Speaking Music, 2015 and 2017). I've featured at Bowery Poetry Club in New York, Busboys and Poets in Washington DC, and the Creative Alliance, here in Baltimore, as well as at numerous bookstores, poetry festivals, and universities.
My work is greatly influenced by, and indebted to, global traditions of poets in the public square. I've learned much from being included in dialogues or panels on decolonial poetics at venues including the Baltimore Museum of Art, Naropa University, Cambridge University (UK), and Poetry Ireland. And from collaborations in Baltimore, such as co-editing with Olu Butterfly a special issue of The Urbanite, co-curating a "Poetry as Community" seies at Goucher College, and writing essays that have appeared in Boston Review and the anthology, A Sense of Regard: Essays on Poetry and Race, as well as many other places.
I'm fortunate to have received support from the Baltimore Commission for the Arts and Humanities, MacDowell, the Maryland State Arts Council, and Yaddo, and I teach in the Peace Studies and Integrated Arts Studies programs at Goucher College.
