rae atakpa
a liver in afterlives,
seer between seas,
and poet for possibility,
rae reads, w/rites, and sows.
| a contemplative, earth-worker, poet | inextricably bound to land, place, the Great Plains; | inextricably bound to body, ancestors, the Gulf of Ghana. |
|---|---|---|
| embodied practice: ontological fugitivity, animist theology, queer archive work. | aim: enliven networks by weaving connections; conduct, shape, and co-inhabit a nexus of [im]material realities and Other-worlds of possibility through & within, beyond & beneath the present. | work: plays in tributaries & compost piles, composes scores, and scales. |
Publications (2016-Present)
| Title | medium | publisher | year |
|---|---|---|---|
| "A Point in Time" & "Cranks" | Photo series & poem - Online | Tallgrass Artist Residency - Kansas Arts Commission | 2025 |
| "The Kansas town that's become a mecca for contemporary art" | Citation - Online | The Journal, Kansas Leadership Center | 2025 |
| "along a desire path" | Poem - Print | between queer teeth anthology - t'ART Press | 2025 |
| "A Recipe! Archive Work." | Prose - Online | Honey Literary | 2025 |
| "To Unworld" | Poem - Print | Unearthing Anthology - Astringent Press | 2025 |
| "Audre Lorde introduces me to political warfare" | Poem - Online | Poetry Society of America | 2024 |
| "before breaking my mother's womb" | Play - Print | Anthology of Beginnings - Forest Publishing | 2024 |
| "bottleneck" & "development" | Poems - Print | Catalogue of Failures | 2024 |
| "Necropolitical compost rite," "Agricultural Poetics II: In the Belly," "delta" | Essays, poem - Online | Heartwood Narratives - A Nation in Exile | 2024 |
| "Agricultural Poetics: Practices for Transformation" | Essay - Print | MdW Fair Atlas | 2024 |
| "Ephemeral Ecologies" | Pedagogy, installation, essay - Online/AFK | Zinn Writing Residency - Lawrence Arts Center | 2023 |
| "i picture picnics" & "i burn green" | Poems - Online | The Purposeful Mayonnaise | 2023 |
| "dyke like" | Poem - Print | WMN Zine | 2023 |
| "Friendly Folk at the Oddball Hoedown Contra Dance" | Cultural critique - Print | The New Territory Magazine | 2023 |
| "Flexible Image Transport System" | Poem - Online | dreamland anthology - fifth wheel press | 2023 |
| "in colonized terms" | Poem - Online | Impermanent Earth | 2022 |
| "first kiss" & "mirror" | Poems - Print | Stranged Writing: A Literary Taxonomy - The Gravity of the Thing | 2022 |
| "Agricultural Poetics: Practices for Transformation" | Essay - Online | MdW Fair Atlas | 2022 |
| "as oceans rise, so ancestors beneath" & "seeping subsumption" | Poems - Print | Contemporary Verse 2 | 2021 |
| "15 hours" | Poem - Print | Lesbians are Miracles | 2021 |
| "schism" | Poem - Online | FAYD [FLORESTA] | 2021 |
| "generation" | Poem - Online | Spicy Zine | 2020 |
| "taking out the garbage" & "mania" | Poems - Print | Snarl: A Journal of Art and Literature | 2020 |
| "unearthing" | Poem - Print | Region Journal | 2019 |
| "gltich" & "a burning" | Poem, journal entry - Print | Urgency Reader - queer.archive.work | 2019 |
| "Black Girl Ghost Story no. 4" & "Grieving" | Poems - Print | Women, Gender, and Families of Color | 2018 |
| "Black Girl Ghost Story no. 3" | Poem - Print | Berkeley Poetry Review | 2018 |
| "Locating," "Mother Tongue," "Black Girl Ghost Story no. 2" | Poems - Print | Asterism Literary Journal | 2018 |
| "Their Eyes Were Watching" & "Psalm 73" | Poems - Print | Jack and Lavon Brosseau Creativity Award - Spencer Museum of Art | 2018 |
| "The Trees on the Mountaintop are from Outer Space" | Essay - Online | John Lewis Fellowship - Humanity in Action | 2018 |
| "Charlotte Davis and Black Women's Self-Empowerment through Writing and Literature" | Interview - Print | English Accents - The University of Kansas | 2018 |
| "Black Girl Ghost Story no. 9 / Teenage Love Poem no. 3" | Poem - Print | Kiosk 58 - The University of Kansas | 2018 |
| "Acceptance" & "Emerging poet" | Poem, interview - Online | Spotlight Issue: Seed - Shade Literary Arts | 2017 |
| "Entitlement" & "Title VII Does Not Protect, Either Way, I Still Have to Walk Home" | Poems - Print | Kiosk 57 - The University of Kansas | 2017 |
| “Last Letter to the Thames," “Not Yet Fallen,” “Wolkenbugel,” "The Design Museum: 'Imagine Moscow Architecture, Revolution, Propaganda,'” “Modern Art Oxford: 'Lubaina Himid: Invisible Strategies'" | Essay, poem, reviews - Print | The London Review - The University of Kansas | 2017 |
| "Bubblegum" & "Where Are You From?" | Poems - Print | Kiosk 55 - The University of Kansas | 2016 |
Art works [under construction]
"Cosmogram 0"ATAKPA and The Fugitive Griot
KCAI Artspace: “Material World”
19 September - 09 November 2024
“...a collaborative cosmological initiation rite with syncretic roots in West African and fugitive Black cosmologies, spiritual traditions, and liberation practices...”
"Ephemeral Ecologies"Rae Atakpa & Liberty Memorial Students
Lawrence Arts Center: June-August 2023
“Over the course of ten weeks, Liberty Memorial Central Middle School seventh-grade students studied poetry and visual mark-making with artist Rae Atakpa to create a collaborative textile inspired by the AIDS Memorial quilt and Freedom Quilts of the American South.”
"Hellinsia homodactyla"Hex keys, low voltage copper wire, journal wire, wire hanger
2023
“...there is hardware
(industry, automation, mechanics)
dowsing rod / wishbone, plastic kin
conducting chemicals. eye, colored
woman (cyborg), remove my IUD
six weeks before Roe v. Wade is overturned...”
"3RD EYE MSK"Lentils, split peas, black-eye peas, amethyst, embroidery floss, fleece
2022
“The weight and potentiality of legumes, the conductive ward of amythest, and the unifying stitch of embroidery channel the divinity and transcendence of ancestral dreaming. Holistically, the mask object implicates protection and rest within/despite racial-capitalist exploitation ...”
"scription"Built-in webcam footage, 00:01:05
2019
“...in their attempts to defy our watch, and collapse
the nonexistent boundary between public and private,
they are often witnessed...”
"Igbo Landing"Video ritual, 00:08:32
2019
“...it is pouring rain and i am barefoot. i run over and over again for an hour. the cornfield is swampy, i slip and step in sow thistle.
i think, in my long dress, about how this running felt two centuries ago...”
"q.doc trailer"Documentary, 00:08:17
2018
archival footage of midwestern queers and a mundane winter—
on being a living self at the end of the world.
Biography
rae was raised in a rural railroad town, works contiguous rivers, and loves land.atakpa’s debut chapbook,
FITS: a biomythography (2023),
won the Poetry Society of America’s
Anna Rabinowitz Award (2024).atakpa publishes Sowing circle,
a newsletter
of art, poems, and essays
on climate, craft, and culture.rae loves being
an athlete, life drawing model, dancer, musician, gardener, herbalist, astrologer, spiritualist, maker, friend, and forever student.
Lambda Literary Nonfiction Writing Fellow (2026)
Social Ecologies Chop Wood Carry Water resident (2024-2026)
Kansas Arts Commission Tallgrass Artist resident (2025)
Community Resource coordinator (2021-2025)
Kansas City Zine Con maker (2023-2024)
Charlotte Street Foundation studio resident (2022-2024)
KState Extension Master Food Volunteer (2022-2024)
Paper Plains Zine Fest panelist (2023)
Lawrence Arts Center Zinn Writing resident (2023)
Charlotte Street Art Writing fellow (2023)
Heartland Arts KC fellow (2023)
Kansas Board Certified Nurse Aid (2021-2023)
English Language Arts instructor (2016-2020)
Ronald E. McNair scholar (2017-2019)
Undergraduate Research Journal for the Humanities editor (2016-2018)
Langston Hughes Award for Creative Writing (2018)
Humanity in Action John Lewis fellow (2018)
University of Michigan Emerging Research scholar (2018)
Spencer Museum of Art Brosseau Creativity Award (2018)
College Language Association presenter (2017)
Hall Center for the Humanities scholar (2016-2017)
Vance Music Studio Assistant (2013)
| teachers [under construction] |
|---|
| - |
| citations |
|---|
| - |