This week we welcome Paolo Javier, a former Queens Borough Poet Laureate (2010-2014). Javier’s interdisciplinary work has featured in PS1 MoMA’s Greater New York show and in the Queens International exhibition. His recent book of poetry, “True Account of Talking to the 7 in Sunnyside” (Roof Books), was a finalist for the 2022 Big Other Book Award. Born and raised in the Philippines, he lives with his family in Jackson Heights.
Of his latest written work, “Near Your Mirror Home (Stay On),” he writes:
“The poems in the chapter “Near Your Mirror Home (Return to Nicholson Road)” emerge from my ongoing exploration of oneiric and hypnagogic poetics. They are dream poems, a genre of poetry that I’ve committed myself to writing daily for the past two decades, but am only now showing in a proper volume of poetry.
These poems are less about dreams, and more interested in experimenting with language embodiment of the dreaming. They proceed from my poetics of questing, innovation, and hybridization across genres and cultural boundaries —a postcolonial echolalia sounded within the margins, from inside the hyphen’s generative and po(e)tential space. Or: English is/as an occupation, the Immigrant Dream is/as a fevered language moment/imminent.”
Javier’s new volume is available here.
See more of our artist profiles here.
