Bookshop West Portal is celebrating Poetry Month! We're pleased to welcome poets Taylor Byas and Jason B. Crawford for a lively conversation. Taylor Byas is the author of Bloodwarm which released last year. Jason B. Crawford's newest work, Year of the Unicorn Kidz releases on March 15th, 2022. This event is free to attend and will be hosted virtually so that you can join from anywhere.

Jason B. Crawford's Year of the Unicorn Kidz beautifully explores existence on the intersections of gender, race, and sexuality. Their profound navigation of identity, violence, and desire transcends boundaries and binaries. Vulnerability takes the center stage as the speaker of these descriptive and passionate poems unburies old relationships and haunting memories. Year of the Unicorn Kidz reads like a coming-of-age story for marginalized youth in America, sketching the body in terms of disconnection, loss, and the explosive nature of desire.

Taylor Byas' Bloodwarm is a collection that explores what it's like to live in a Black body that is constantly scrutinized and dissected beneath the white gaze. These poems both utilize and reinvigorate classic poetic forms with a voice that speaks back to the mob that hunts it. This book is an act of rebellion, an assertion of worth, a will to live.

Jason B. Crawford (they/them) is a writer born in Washington DC, raised in Lansing, MI. Their debut chapbook collection Summertime Fine is out through Variant Lit. Their second chapbook Twerkable Moments is out from Paper Nautilus Press. Their third chapbook, Good Boi, is forthcoming from Neon Hemlock press in fall 2021. Their debut Full Length Year of the Unicorn Kidz will be out in 2022 from Sundress Publications. Crawford holds a Bachelor of Science in Creative Writing from Eastern Michigan University and is the co-founder of The Knight’s Library Magazine. Crawford is the winner of the Courtney Valentine Prize for Outstanding Work by a Millennial Artist, Vella Chapbook Contest, and Variant Lit Chapbook Contest.  They are the 2021 OutWrite chapbook contest winner in poetry. Their work can be found in Split Lip Magazine, Glass Poetry, Four Way Review, Voicemail poems, FreezeRay Poetry, HAD, among others. They are a current poetry MFA candidate at The New School.

Taylor Byas is a Black poet and essayist. Originally from Chicago, she moved to Alabama for six years, where she received both her Bachelor’s degree in English and her Master’s degree in English (Creative Writing concentration) from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Taylor currently lives in Cincinnati, Ohio where she is a third year PhD student and Albert C. Yates Scholar at the University of Cincinnati studying poetry. She is also an Assistant Features Editor for The Rumpus. She has received five Pushcart and six Best of the Net nominations, and has won a Best Microfiction Award. She is also the 1st Place Winner of the 2020 Poetry Super Highway Contest, the 2020 Frontier Poetry Award for New Poets, the 2021 Adrienne Rich Poetry Award, a finalist for the 2020 Frontier OPEN Prize, and an Honorable Mention for the 2021 Ninth Letter Literary Award in Poetry.

Poetry Month Special: Taylor Byas & Jason B. Crawford