rae atakpa
A seer between seas, a liver in afterlives, and a poet for possibility,
Rae reads, w/rites, and sows.
Atakpa’s practice is of the web:
iridescent, ecosomatic, spacecraft.Rae’s many-formed work plays by spelling,
conducting musicality, and embodying. In form and content,
they intend to stimulate senses, initiate curiosity, and companion
fugitivity, the: opaque and unknown, queer and suggestive, persistent and present.Rae’s debut, self-published chapbook, FITS: a biomythography,
won the Poetry Society of America’s Anna Rabinowitz prize.
Atakpa’s writing appears at Impermanent Earth, Honey Literary, MDW Fair,
Berkeley Poetry Review, Forest Publications, Contemporary Verse 2, t'ART Press, Unearthing Anthology, and elsewhere in "the us" and abroad.Atakpa’s artworkings have surfaced in fellowship with Tallgrass
Artist Residency, Social Ecologies,
Charlotte Street Foundation, KCAI Artspace, and Lawrence Arts Center.
Rae grew up in a rural railroad border town between -Oklahoma Kansas-
and currently lives Northeast.Atakpa loves being a w/riter: dancer, musician, martial artist,
figure model, archivist, mathematician, experimentalist,
earthworker, forever student, and friend to all creatures.
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 |
| "Where Are You From?" & "Bubblegum" | Poems - Print | Kiosk 55 - The University of Kansas | 2016 |
Art works
"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 Dobbs...”
"3RD EYE MSK"Lentils, split peas, black-eye peas, amethyst, embroidery floss, fleece
(2022)
“The weight of legumes,
the channel of amythest,
the stitch of embroidery
unifying the memory
with rest to time
travel. How do we protect our dreams,
bodies, ancestral dreams? How do we
honor, recover, and metabolize?
"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.
Selected curriculum vitae
omitting wage labor
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)
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