“Here is Where We Meet” is a finalist in the 2025 Tupelo Quarterly Open Poetry Prize!

The poem on Tupelo Quarterly

I’m so delighted that my long poem “Here is Where We Meet” was selected as a finalist in the 2025 Tupelo Quarterly Open Poetry Prize!

This poem started as a short prose poem interrogating the Silk Road and its relationship to myself and my beloved, and over four years somehow evolved into a 28-page conversation with the stars. Set on a remembered Silk Road, the poem follows a speaker’s westward journey toward her beloved as she questions herself and the constellations about the economies of love. The title is taken from the short story collection of the same name by John Berger, whose writing on the exploited bodies in art, commerce, and migration have been central to the poem’s thinking, while the poem itself was influenced by many writers paramount to my practice, including Kahlil Gibran, Sohrab Sepehri, Jenny Xie, and classical Chinese poets.

I’m deeply grateful to the editors for selecting the poem, and for it to be among such wonderful peers. I’m also incredibly grateful for the many brilliant poets and teachers that have given it attention over the years — perspicacious minds and souls!

“Here is Where We Meet” is also in the process of taking on a new, cross-disciplinary form with some of my favourite artists and collaborators — more soon!