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chrysanthemum

@chrysanthemvm_

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🫦 poet & co-director: @provslam
💌 booking: @the_speakeasy_project
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🎂 I’m the Word Shelter Artist at @WeddingCakeHouse_Residencies from August 15 to September 30, 2025! On Labor Day, I’ll also be doing an IG takeover on their account! 🛠️

🌾 You can find lines of my poetry alternating every minute on the lawn of Wedding Cake House (514 Broadway) by the bus stop on the corner of Broadway and Tobey in Providence, RI!🚏

🚸 This auto-cento is composed of excerpts from writing drafted in the past year — it includes a glimpse of what I‘ve been working toward as @pvdcommemorationlab’s writer-in-residence on Public Street! Online, you can see the Word Shelter update in real-time at: dirtpalace.org/wordshelter 🎛️

❤️ All my love to absolute legends Pippi Zornoza and Xander Marro for the invitation! Happy 25th anniversary to @dirtpalace! 💋 taken in Wedding Cake House by @chrysanthemvm_

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a year ago

An attempt to remember the gayborhood in Oklahoma City as I once knew it. Honored to share this aubade today for @poetsorg’s Poem-A-Day, graciously curated this month by @tagreathouse 💛

It’s been over a decade since I’ve returned. Leaving is certainly not guiltless. There’s more I miss than I often admit. How grateful I am that as a child in Oklahoma, I witnessed queer life in public — that alone showed me ways forward.

Scroll for a postcard of the Habana Inn dated 1969. Also, a very unrelated picture @telywo took of me with Anthony Bourdain at Rainier BBQ months ago in Seattle. by @chrysanthemvm_

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2 years ago

I’m featured as @split_this_rock’s Poem of the Week! This is the first poem I’ve published since 2017. All my love & gratitude to Gowri Koneswaran (@gowrimozhi) for her support. ❤️

To quote the late revolutionary Leslie Feinberg in hir “I Can’t Afford to Get Sick” speech published in 1998: “Winning more sensitive care for trans people is not enough to save our lives. Not if we can’t afford to see a doctor or go to a hospital. The fight against bigotry must go hand in hand with the battle to make health care affordable. / And in this fight, trans people do not stand alone.” Without my dear loved ones, this poem wouldn’t exist.

I’m endlessly grateful to Tycho Horan at @binch.press in Providence, RI for designing & printing these 8”x14” risograph broadsides of this poem. I’ve been primarily offering these prints at gigs in exchange for direct donations to Palestine Legal. I’ll have them with me as I travel this spring to Milwaukee, WI, Seattle, WA, Baltimore, MD, Williamstown, MA & Schenectady, NY.

Image descriptions available in alt text. Link to read in bio. Photo of a broadside on a yellow wall. by @chrysanthemvm_

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3 years ago

Two new poems in @hfrlitmag’s folio on Aftercare! All my love to the one & only @cultiv.asian for offering these a home.

The first poem is for the brilliant cohort of young poets that comprised the 2024 LGBTQ+ Youth Poet Laureate Residency. As @lambdaliterary LGBTQ Writers in Schools’ inaugural Poet-in-Residence for the program, I had the gift of building & teaching a semester-long curriculum of LGBTQ+ poetry to queer & trans high school writers. I learned so much from them.

The second poem is for @si_lj. My love.

❤️ by @chrysanthemvm_

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3 months ago

PRESENTING THE 5PAN 2026 KEYNOTE SPEAKER! Swipe to learn more about our incredible keynote Chrysanthemum! Register now to secure your spot! by @chrysanthemvm_

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6 months ago

Join our PCL writers at @riffraffpvd on Saturday, 21 Feb, 6PM to hear readings from the many literary works they produced during the PCL Writing Residency! Taking place in parallel to the artist residency, this space led by Dr. Elizabeth Maynard (Professor of Art History) housed writers Traci Picard, Chrysanthemum and Karla Alba in a year-long process as they too interrogated ideas around commemoration at their chosen sites and engaged in formal experimentation with their writing. The final works showcase a unique, multimodal blend of literary registers and creative strategies, all of which you can experience in person at Riffraff! Join us there to experience the readings and hear about the diverse processes that shaped them.
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📅 Saturday, 21 Feb, 6PM
📌 Riffraff Bookstore & Bar, 60 Valley St #107A Providence
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The Providence Commemoration Lab is a program run by @providenceact and @rhodeislandhistory and funded by the Mellon Foundation and the American Rescue Plan. The Lab sites and stages new, temporary projects on public property that invite unexpected ways of understanding commemoration as a communal process of historical redress and spatial reclamation. Know more on our website at the link in our bio!
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#providencecommemorationlab #pcl #pvdcl2024 #pvdcl #rhodeisland #providenceri #cityofprovidence taken in Riffraff Bookstore and Bar by @chrysanthemvm_

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8 months ago

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a year ago

I’m @chrysanthemvm_, the Word Shelter Artist at Wedding Cake House from August 15 to September 30, 2025! Lines of my poetry alternate every minute on the lawn by the bus stop on the corner of Broadway + Tobey!

I’m a poet + performance artist who approaches public history through the literary arts. Alongside @n.affisatou + @prettybirdinri, I co-direct @provslam, the longest running community-run open mic + poetry slam in Rhode Island that’s been housed at @as220providence since 1992! After starting on the stage, I’ve spent the last many years turning to the page to develop my debut collection of poems.

I’m also currently writer-in-residence at Public Street for the @pvdcommemorationlab! During my residency, I’ve drawn on the lineage of docupoetics to guide my writing. As Muriel Rukeyser, godmother of documentary poetry, concludes in The Book of the Dead from her second collection US 1: “These roads will take you into your own country.”

In the comments, find captions + read more about where these roads took me this spring + summer— taken in Wedding Cake House by @chrysanthemvm_

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a year ago

New poem in @shadeliteraryarts! This gesture toward home is a love letter to English teachers, especially one Ms. Marian Hulsey, who shifted the trajectory of my little life.

Without public educators who teach the arts and humanities, my world would be so grim and gray. Recently, Ms. Hulsey shared with me that if she were still teaching in classrooms today, the books she loves and once taught would likely be removed in Oklahoma and much of the United States today. It’s sinister.

Many have helped the poem reach this form. Love and gratitude to @lutherxhughes for offering a home in The Shade Journal, to my lifelong co-conspirator @thejusticeameer, to new beloveds from my @tin_house cohort this summer: @aliceyliang, @emmerbelle, @hey_miss_j_, @josiedefaye, @micaelakaibniraen, @shlaghab, Shiyang Su, and our instructor, the brilliant Ms. Lena Khalaf Tuffaha!

Thank you to the researchers and memory keepers of Mr. Ralph Ellison, whose connection with Dr. Ludwig Hebestreit and eventual departure from Oklahoma have provided me a mirror to see.

#poetry #poems #poem #poet #shadeliteraryarts #ralphellison #invisibleman #oklahoma #oklahomacity #okc #classensas #jamesbaldwin #giovannisroom #englishteacher #bannedbooks taken in Classen School of Advanced Studies by @chrysanthemvm_

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We’re finishing out August publications with a new poem by @chrysanthemvm_! Read, “Reading Ellison on Ellison Avenue,” at the link in our bio! 🎺✉️❤️📚

As a reminder, submissions are open until October 31! Send. Your. Poems. Please. ❤️

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#chrysanthemum #poetry #newpoems #literary #poems #writing #publishing #journal #shade #shadeliteraryarts #ellison #ralphellison by @chrysanthemvm_

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a year ago

Friday! We are so excited to welcome @chrysanthemvm_ into our space by way of the Just Be (Loved) Poetry Slam & Open mic curated by @crystalvalentine94 and @leboah Come get your life! by @chrysanthemvm_

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Writer at Public Street// Chrysanthemum is a poet, performance artist, and public historian. She serves as Co-Director of the Providence Poetry Slam, housed at AS220 since 1992. She has received fellowships from Poetry Foundation, Rhode Island Foundation, Kundiman, and Lambda Literary. Her work appears in Poem-a-Day, The Nation, The Rumpus, Them, Button Poetry, among others. She is a Vietnamese queer and trans writer who uses poetry to confront gaps and contradictions in historical records.
Photograph by: @alliexjesse
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The Lab has a robust writers cohort alongwith artists who have been engaging with one of three sites in the city of Providence. Funded by @mellonfoundation and American Rescue Plan and coadministered by @providenceact and @rhodeislandhistory, PCL will stage new, temporary projects in a year-long journey to engage with commemoration as a communal process of historical redress and spatial reclamation.
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#providencecommemorationlab #pclwriters #pcl #pvdcl2024 #pvdcl #rhodeisland #providenceri #cityofprovidence by @chrysanthemvm_

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