Kevin Sanchez came to write the stories he had been holding in for a while. Arlo Pate came to take their art seriously. RuthAnn wanted to get critiqued. Kevin L. Tarver came to be the poet he always wanted to be. 

Whatever their intentions, they all came to form the inaugural Poets Across Lines cohort and found a like-minded, resonant community. The pilot fellowship program, launched with support from the Poetry Foundation, was based in PEN Across America chapter cities of Birmingham, Alabama, and Tucson, Arizona, to nurture talent and platform new voices. 

“Poetry is the unity that crosses every divide,” wrote Salaam Green, Birmingham program advisor, in her poem titled “Poetry Brings Hope to Life.” “Poetry is the sharing of humanity and belonging.”

Green, an award-winning poet and healer and the inaugural poet laureate of historic Birmingham, performed the poem live at the Poets Across Lines Final Reading, which was held virtually last month. The four poet fellows read the work they had developed with program mentors over four months of writing workshops, guest speaker sessions, and financial support. 

“It was a powerful and inspirational night of poetry as these poets shared work about their communities and around the themes of housing, immigration, and LGBTQIA+ identity, themes that were surfaced by the community as being essential discussions,” said Clarisse Rosaz Shariyf, interim Co-CEO and Chief Program Officer, Literary Programming, at

PEN America. “The event was a testimony to the power of literature to create and celebrate community voices.”

Arlo Pate

In Alabama, Tarver and Pate met bi-monthly with Erika Wade, the program mentor, who is an award-winning writer, actor, and producer.

“We created safe spaces for sustainable creative processes and vulnerable storytelling,” said Wade. 

Pate, a writer and educator with a passion for farming, drew on themes of the simple ways of life around them, of freedom, of release, writing in vivid detail. “It haunts you,” said Wade of Pate’s work. “Inviting us into the lives of everyday people and the colors that they add to the world around us.”

In “Sanctuary,” they write,

I’m saying its been dark

hallways, gridded days 

rotten, powdery sick-green carpet, the only way forward 

until your plane flew overhead 

so low I could touch its belly

“Erika is able to reflect back to us about our poetry, for me that’s really been encouraging and impactful,” said Pate. “Just to break down things into tools that I can use for my own agency and my art.”

Tarver, a writer, educator, and mental health advocate writes on emotional health

awareness, sexual health education, and his experiences within the southern LGBT+ community. “He brings honesty and the fearlessness to tell his story his way,” said Wade.

“I was like, I am afraid to tell the truth,” said Tarver. “And she [Wade] was like, don’t be afraid to speak your truth, start with your truth.”

His poems from the workshop touch on home and identity, violence and discrimination. In “Spill,” he writes:

My poetry 

Begs me to be 

Honest. 

It’s hovering 

Over me, 

Waiting 

For the spill

Kevin Sanchez

Across the country, in Tucson, RuthAnn and Sanchez met regularly with Gabriel Dozal, poetry editor for DIAGRAM and the program mentor, and Ofelia Montelongo, a bilingual writer from Mexico, who advised the cohort. 

“It’s nice to have somebody that knows the field and treats me like a colleague,” said Sanchez. 

“Kevin Sanchez re-enacts the emblems of his life deeply,” said Donzal. “The memories are imbued with exactness and precision in Kevin’s work and plenty of surprise for the reader.” 

Sanchez, a high-school teacher, holds a degree in English and creative writing from the University of Arizona. In his writing, he explores Tucson family history and our technological lives while experimenting with poetry as a visual form. 

In “Siri will never be a chicana,” he writes:

Yet she’ll still fail to compute having an ancestral tongue sliced away and replaced by two so colonized into oblivion, that they battle each other until even Siri forgets she was once just numbers and symbols.

RuthAnn, an aroace abolitionist and accessibility advocate, is a translator and aspiring librarian. “RuthAnn’s is a poetry that merges identity and justice,” said Dozal. 

RuthAnn

In “Moon/Luna For Asteroid 2024 PT5,” they write:

Maybe this will change everything

Or perhaps it has always been this way

Objects circling each other in an ornate dance

No matter what, I love you while you’re here

“It was a really incredible program,” said Sarah Dillard, Manager, World Voices Festival & Literary Programs, who managed the Poets Across Lines fellowship. “We got really great feedback from poets who were part of the program.”

“I hope programs like PAL keep happening,” said Montelongo. “To keep telling our stories in our own voices, in our own language.” 


Read the poems from the workshops in Watching for the Moon Above Zine published by Pansy Press. Anyone who hopes to participate in – or support – future cohorts of Poets Across Lines can reach out at [email protected].