Nehassaiu's Poems Sample Poems Bookings
Have appeared in Callaloo, American Poetry Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, PoemMemoirStory, Tuesday; An Art Journal, Caribbean Writer, Torch, Encyclopedia Project Vol. II F-K, and the anthology, After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery For Life Shattering Events, available from Sante Lucia Books and Amazon.com. She has new work forthcoming in ARAVA Review and Cave Canem Anthology XII.
Her chapbook, Undressing The River, won The 2011 Center For Book Arts Letterpress Chapbook Prize and is now available through The Center For Book Arts Bookstore. The award also includes a week-long Winter Shaker retreat at The Millay Colony.
An earlier chapbook, Percussion, Salt & Honey won the 2001 Philbrick Poetry Award for New England Poets. Published in a limited edition run by The Providence Athenaeum, the country's fourth oldest library, copies are now sold out.
Recipient of the inaugural 2009/10 Cave Canem Full Fellowship to Vermont Studio Center, a finalist for The MacColl Johnson Fellowship and winner of the 2008 Rhode Island State Council on The Arts Poetry Fellowship, Nehassaiu is a graduate of The Brown University MFA Program, an alum of The Sqaw Valley Community of Writers, Marilyn Nelson's Soul Mountain Retreat, and a Cave Canem Fellow.
January 28, 2011: Home from three weeks of writing, creative solace and international community at the Vermont Studio Center. New poems! Went snow-shoeing. Met Brigit Pegeen-Kelly and Ilya Kaminsky. Connected with a core group of kindred poets, including Tova Gardner, who has asked to publish my poem "Refuge" and 3 other poems in an upcoming issue of her journal, ARAVA Review. Thank you VSC and Cave Canem for the Full Fellowship.
Featured Reading: The Louder Arts Series
"Live, from New York, it's Rachel McKibbens!
We had a great crowd on Monday, well over a hundred peeps squeezin' all up against each other to hear poetry while the temp outside didn't drop below 50. I know the polar bears are sad about it, but New Yorkers deserve an Autumn night in January every once in a while. We opened the year with a stellar feature reading by Nehassaiu deGannes. Her poems rolled over the huge new year audience then backed up and simply flattened them. The crowd, even the chatty-cathys in the back of the room, was engaged by her presence and moved by her stunning, truly unique poems." Louder Arts e-newsletter 1.10.2007
photo credit: michelle cruz
