2021 Poetry Hotline

Starting Monday, April 19th, SPACE will connect the 2021 Poetry Hotline, a 24/7 call-in number featuring a new poem every week. Throughout the Spring, call 1-207-828-5607 to hear poems by Myles Bullen, Myronn Hardy, CA Conrad, Stacey Tran, Alessandra Nysether-Santos, Shelley Wong, Éireann Lorsung, and Arisa White. 

The 2021 Poetry Hotline is a screenless experience available to anyone with access to a cell phone or landline. This project honors the importance of poetry to speak to us in times of change and upheaval and offers a direct line to Maine-based and national poets and their visions for the future. The 2021 Poetry Hotline leans on art as both balm and bravery for the road ahead, led by a range of poets offering words of respite, reflection, radicalization, or regeneration to any caller, anywhere, when they need it. 

Schedule (hotline updated every Monday morning)

Myles Bullen “Sky/Clap”: April 19
Myronn Hardy “Democracy Americana”: April 26
CA Conrad “GOLDEN IN THE MORNING CRANE OUR NECKS”: May 3
Stacey Tran “IT SEEMED WE HAD TO DIVE IN TO HAVE A LITTLE EFFECT”: May 10
Alessandra Nysether-Santos “Fat Woman Utopia!”: May 17
Shelley Wong “Open Season”: May 24
Éireann Lorsung “Telephone 8 (you have reached)”: May 31
Arisa White “Lemons”: June 7

Myles Bullen
Myles Bullen (he/they) Is an Indigenous Artpoet and indie rap artist from Portland, ME. They create songs and poems advocating for social justice, mental health, and how to deal with depression and anxiety. Myles has toured throughout 40 States, and Europe at various venues and colleges, performing and teaching creative writing workshops in schools, recovery centers, and prisons.  He has released two full-length projects, Wake Up Century and Not Dead Yet. Their newest project, Healing Hurts, is available on limited edition vinyl and cassette.

Myronn Hardy
Myronn Hardy is the author of five books of poems, most recently, Radioactive Starlings, published by Princeton University Press (2017).  His poems have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the Virginia Quarterly Review, the Baffler, Rhino, and elsewhere.

CA Conrad
CA Conrad has been working with the ancient technologies of poetry and ritual since 1975. They are the author of Amanda Paradise (Wave Books, 2021). Other titles include The Book of Frank, While Standing in Line for Death, and Ecodeviance. They received a Creative Capital grant, a Pew Fellowship, a Lambda Literary Award, and a Believer Magazine Book Award. They teach at Columbia University in New York City and Sandberg Art Institute in Amsterdam.

Stacey Tran
Stacey Tran is the founder of Tender Table, a food and storytelling community of women, femmes, trans/nonbinary folks who are BIPOC. She is the author of Soap for the Dogs (Gramma Press, 2018).

Alessandra Nysether-Santos
Alessandra Nysether-Santos (she/hers) is a Brazilian American poet and high school English teacher in North Carolina. She has poems published in Expressions and Sad Girl Review and forthcoming in Até Mais: An Anthology of Latinx Futurisms. You can find her on Twitter @donotdiscover.

Shelley Wong
Shelley Wong is the author of As She Appears (YesYes Books, 2022), winner of the 2019 Pamet River Prize, and the chapbook RARE BIRDS (Diode Editions, 2017). Her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Gulf Coast, Kenyon Review, and The New Republic. She has received a Pushcart Prize and fellowships and residencies from MacDowell, Kundiman, Vermont Studio Center, Fire Island National Seashore, I-Park Foundation, and SPACE. She is an affiliate artist at Headlands Center for the Arts and lives in San Francisco.

Éireann Lorsung
Éireann Lorsung lives not far from the Atlantic Ocean, in a small apartment in a small city, where she makes pictures, books, and clothes, and spends time thinking about literature and art in the company of others. Milkweed Editions published Music for Landing Planes By, Her book, and The Century; you can find out more at ohbara.com.

Arisa White
Arisa White is a Cave Canem fellow, Sarah Lawrence College alumna, MFA graduate from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and author of the poetry chapbooks Disposition for Shininess, Post Pardon, Black Pearl, Perfect on Accident, and “Fish Walking” & Other Bedtime Stories for My Wife. Originally from New York and living in central Maine, Arisa is an assistant professor in creative writing at Colby College and serves on the board of directors for Foglifter and Nomadic Press. She is also an advisory board member for Gertrude and a community advisory board member for Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance.