Matthew Gellman’s Beforelight is one of my favorite books of 2024. I was so lucky to get to speak with him about the book, the intersection of place and queer identity, and what he’s working on next. Click here or on the image above to read the interview.
Interview with Joshua Garcia in The Adroit Journal
I had the significant pleasure of interviewing Joshua Garcia for issue 49 of The Adroit Journal. Garcia’s debut book of poems, Pentimento, engages with themes I find so fascinating – art, religiosity, queerness in the American South. It contains beautiful moments of ekphrasis and what I see as a kind of self-ekphrasis. Click here or on the headline above to check out the interview!
Interview with Paisley Rekdal in The Adroit Journal
The new issue of The Adroit Journal went live today, and I’m lucky to have an interview with Paisley Rekdal in it. Rekdal’s newest book of criticism, Appropriate, is about the history and practice of cultural appropriation in literature. It’s a nuanced and carefully-considered book, and I felt honored to read it, let alone to get some time to speak with Rekdal about it. Click here or on the headline above to check out the interview!
New Work in POETRY Magazine
I’m so honored to have “Neighbors,” a pair of sonnets (two 14-line poems — we’ll call them sonnets) in the September issue of POETRY. Many thanks to the editorial staff and the folks at the Poetry Foundation for their good work, and to Guest Editor Su Cho for including my work in this issue. Click here or on the image above to read them.
Interview with Kate Gaskin at The Adroit Journal
I was so fortunate to have the opportunity to interview my friend Kate Gaskin for about her book Forever War for The Adroit Journal blog. Kate has been a friend of mine for years, and I really cherished the opportunity to speak with her about themes of war, isolation, and parenthood, as well as bits about the writing life. After a year when we have all been called upon to look at ourselves and our own complicity more critically, Kate’s book — which she has described as “ask[ing] us to consider the ways we’re complicit in structural violence” — is an important read. Click here or on the image above to read our conversation. Also, check out Kate’s book!
A Year in Review
“A year like no other.” “Unprecedented.” “A time of change.”
2020 has been such a year of highs and lows. The initial excitement of new poems, publications, and readings was so thoroughly offset by the fact that 2020 has been a year of reckoning, one marked by such pain. In many ways, I’m so fortunate, and this year has been a reminder of that. The support from the Stegner Fellowship has given me stability in a time characterized by instability, the privilege to stay home, to keep my distance and watch the world from my apartment’s bay windows, watching the bees as they studied the little white flowers on the enormous jade plants outside.
I was fortunate to publish poems in some amazing places — Best New Poets 2020, The New York Times, Ploughshares, Boston Review, Smartish Pace, Shenandoah, Southeast Review, and Salt Hill, with plenty of forthcoming publications to look forward to in 2021.
But publications are far from everything. In 2020 we witnessed real human strength and bravery in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, we saw people making sacrifices for one another, and we lost a tragic and unnecessarily large number of lives along the way. We witnessed calls for change and reforms in laws and law enforcement as the Black Lives Matter movement gained momentum. These calls for justice can not fall of unhearing ears — it’s my job as a white American and the duty of all Americans to work for real change, for reform and justice, for equal and fair treatment under the law, for anti-racist practices and teaching in our classrooms and in our lives.
In light of all of this, I am hopeful for the future. I have to be. I’m hopeful for the resilience of the human spirit, for our ability to enact change in our lives and our institutions. I’m hopeful for a future characterized by empathy and care.
Much of the time, the enterprise of the writer feels more than a little silly. We sit in our little rooms searching for the right forms of expression. I’ve been thinking a lot this year about a line from Layli Long Soldier’s poem “38,” which says, “Keep in mind, I am not a historian.” In many ways, poets aren’t historians. We don’t keep objective record of much at all, but we are agents of collective and social memory. We help interpret the past and present in an attempt to help some future reader understand the experience we write from. Poems aren’t the single solution to any of our present day problems, but they are little empathy machines. They help us feel connected in ways that aren’t normally possible. They help us understand another’s experience in a completely intimate way. And in a time when I’ve never felt so distant from my family and friends, poems help bridge that gap.
All of this is to say, I’m oddly hopeful for next year. I’m so grateful for the outpouring of support my poems have received this year, and I’m looking forward to the opportunities and the interconnectedness that my poems can help me achieve next year.
As I’m writing this, a line I haven’t thought of in a long time popped in my head, the last line in Richard Siken’s Crush, the book that guided so much of my early writing:
“We are all going forward. None of us are going back.”
The only way forward is to have a real reckoning with the past. We can build a better future for ourselves and for others, but it will require real introspection, self-interrogation, re-building, justice.
I love you all, and I am thankful for you.
Cheers,
JW
Poem Featured in the New York Times
My poem, “Figs,” which was originally featured in Shenandoah earlier this year, is part of a new feature in The New York Times called “America 2020, In Vision and Verse.” The NYT editors say of this feature, “It’s been a year unlike any other in living memory. We selected five poems by contemporary American poets and asked five photographers to let the poems inspire them.”
“Figs” was interpreted by Atlanta-based photographer Wulf Bradley in to a series of stunning self-portraits, one of which I’ve featured below. Click here or on the image below to check out the editorial, which was organized by the NYT’s Morrigan McCarthy and features poems by Kamilah Aisha Moon, Sara Lupita Olivares, Elizabeth Acevedo, Yesika Salgado.
What?? I'm in Best New Poets 2020!
I’m so honored that Best New Poets 2020 guest judge Brian Teare has selected my poem “Clock with Reverse Gears” (originally published last year in Sycamore Review) for the 2020 anthology. I’ve been submitting to Best New Poets for years—since at least 2015—so I’m very excited to have been selected this year. This year’s list of finalists is especially strong and includes so many writers I admire, so it’s an extra honor to be among them. Click here or on the image below to see the full list of Best New Poets finalists.
Writing Your Name on the Glass Reviewed at Empty Mirror Books!
I am so very thankful for Alina Stefanescu’s thoughtful, well-considered review of Writing Your Name on the Glass. It’s so touching and encouraging to see how people engage with my work.
A favorite moment from the review:
It is significant that Whiteside’s poems begin with a fugue. In Latin, the verb fuga means to run. And these poems use running as a form of poetic motion, a movement that is both lyrical and essential to the questions of queer identity in many southern states.
To feel seen in this way, to have someone pick up on nuances in the collection at the language level, is heartening and invaluable. Click here or on the image below to read the whole review!
Interview with The Adroit Journal and Tone Madison
I’m so excited to have an interview with The Adroit Journal – who published me in their 18th issue and for whom I’ve been a poetry reader for the past two years. The interview is in conjunction with Tone Madison, who published a podcast version of the interview. Super cool!
I love this little excerpt from John’s summary of the interview:
“This connection to the past and the present holds true as he traverses love through technology, music, and life in 2019.
“Whiteside's work also focuses on the body as a central image. From bodies in physical love to bodies spliced with the natural world, Whiteside subverts traditional expectations of the roles that bodies play. “
Click here for the podcast and the image below for the text interview!
I'm going to be a Stegner Fellow!
I’ve been sitting on some good news for a (long) while – I’ve been offered a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in Poetry from Stanford University! I’ve applied for the Stegner Fellowship every year since graduate school, and I’m so glad this is the year it worked out for me. The Stegner Fellowship is a wonderful gift of time and resources to work on completing my first full-length book manuscript and get things ramped up on a second manuscript. I’m excited to workshop again, learn from my fellow fellows and the faculty, and read and grow in so many ways. The list of former and current fellows is humbling to say the least, and I am honored to be listed among them, to join – as Eavan Boland calls it – their “community of craft.”
Click here or on the image below to read more about the Stegner Fellowship program.
Interview with the Chicago Review of Books!
What a dream it is to have been given the space to talk about queer representation in poetry, melancholy, and writing about the body in the Chicago Review of Books’ “Poetry Today” series. Thanks to Ruben Quesada for featuring me alongside some amazing poets – including some of my poetry heroes! Click the image above to read the full feature.
Writing Your Name on the Glass featured on SPD's Poetry Bestseller list for April 2019!
I’m honored and completely humbled to find Writing Your Name on the Glass on Small Press Distribution’s April 2019 Poetry Bestseller list! It’s so wonderful to see that my little chapbook is making its way out into the world to so many people’s hands. Click on the image below to check out the full list!
Writing Your Name on the Glass is a real thing that's out in the world!
I am so, so excited that my chapbook Writing Your Name on the Glass, officially released on April 23rd.
The release has been so well received, and I’m to grateful for all of the people who have already picked up the chapbook or ordered a copy — and, of course, for the amazing people at Bull City Press who made this possible.
Writing Your Name on the Glass has been on Amazon’s best sellers rankings for Gay & Lesbian Poetry since it debuted, which is mind-blowing to me. It’s humbling to see my name and my chapbook among so many writers and books I respect and love.
You can snag a copy of Writing Your Name on the Glass from Bull City Press, Amazon, or Small Press Distribution.
Writing Your Name on the Glass reviewed by The Poetry Question
Chris Margolin over at The Poetry Question reveiwed Writing Your Name on the Glass. I especially appreciate how he described the chapbook as “bluntly-gentle,” and how he concludes “Writing Your Name on the Glass, at times, is very uncomfortable, but so is reality. “ It also features a video of me reading a poem from the chapbook!
Click here or on the image below to read the full (very brief) review.
Finalist for the Mississippi Review Prize
I’m so happy to say my poem “Do Not” was named a finalist for the 2019 Mississippi Review Prize! “Do Not” will be published in the Summer 2019 issue of Mississippi Review in June alongside the winner — Jehanne Dubrow — and all the other finalists. Congrats to all! Click the image below to link to the full list of winners and finalists.
I'm judging the Randall Jarrell Poetry Competition!
I’m really honored that the folks at storySouth and the North Carolina Writers’ Network have asked me to be the guest judge for the Randall Jarrell Poetry Competition. The winner will be awarded $200 and offered publication in storySouth, and publication may be offered to select finalists as well. Click the image below to link to more information.
Interview at Juke Joint Magazine
The editors at Juke Joint Magazine were kind enough to feature a few of my poems in their inaugural issue and feature an interview with me for their blog. Click here or on the image below to read it!
