J.David

I offer an interactive and immersive experience involving engagement with literature, often specifically poetry. My workshops tend to be 45 minutes to an hour and can cover the following topics:
Schizopoetics
Transforming grief
Recovery narratives
Queering language
Radical philosophies of poetry and its practice
The necropastoral and ecopoetics
Overlaps in the disciplines of science and poetry
A quick survey of contemporary poetry
Traditional poetic forms (specifically the Pantoum, I really dig a good Pantoum)

My readings tend to be between 5-20 minutes long (but can be up to an hour) and can be prefaced or followed by an exposition about the work. My poetry typically tackles what it's like to be queer, mentally ill, and an immigrant. I like complicating recovery narratives, long lyric explorations of the self, adding pop-culture references into my work, communist poems, and anything about flowers, friendship, or love. My favorite thing in the world is joy. My second favorite is survival. I'm going to give you poems that celebrate those two things.

J. David is a Ukrainian-American writer and laboratory geneticist from Cleveland, Ohio. Their debut chapbook Hibernation Highway was released in 2020 from Madhouse Press. They are a Baldwin House fellow and member of the Sad Kid's Superhero Collective as well as Editor-in-Chief for Flypaper Lit ​and chief poetry critic for the Cleveland Review of Books; their work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Harvard Review, Colorado Review, Salt Hill, Redivider, The Rumpus, Passages North, The Journal, Muzzle Magazine, and others.

Apart from their page poetry they've participated in numerous slams and competitions including the Rustbelt Poetry Festival, Southern Fried Poetry Festival, and the National Poetry Slam, where their team representing Cleveland placed 9th.