All I seem capable of talking about is how being outside feels like being squeezed inside an armpit inside a sauna. Shout out to Trader Joe’s freezepops, sympathetic friends for receiving voice notes consisting mostly of me groaning Slavically, and my new USB-chargeable hand fan. We’ll get through this together.
…Not least because there’s a really great Track Changes coming up on July 28, with Zach Blackwood and Gion Davis! Two stellar poets and people. Maybe you’d like to know how I know?
I met Zach in 2018, when we both read for Boston Gordon’s beloved You Can’t Kill A Poet series at Tattooed Mom. I spent his whole set—these discursive yet galaxy-brain-cohesive, zingy, tender lines that were so clever I wished I had a replay button to keep up, & perfect charming deadpan delivery—having the intrusive thought that we needed to be friends immediately. By the end of the night, we’d decided that we needed to host a hot dog-themed event called Franks O’Hara. And we sure did. On the roof of the Institute of Contemporary Art. With custom hot dog menus. All courtesy of sponsors & generous friends. With some people, you just know. Anyway, after being in a sort of job-related art performing detention (ask him to explain this) for a few years, which is a few years too long, Zach can do public readings again. A gift to us all!
Gion came through Philly in 2022 on tour for the release for their debut poetry collection, Too Much, at the same bar as above, a site of many blessed occurrences. I interviewed them about the book, too—I found their poems so enlivening & clever & fiery—& the link is now fully lost to time (can’t even find it in the Wayback Machine??) but I totally remember the charged feeling of experiencing their work, & I’m so glad they have a new book out, Designated Stranger, which I’m sure we’ll be hearing from. And I’ll try to not be nervous in the specific way that I get when a guest on the series is also a musician!
✧ ✦ Tickets & More Info ✦ ✧
Zach Blackwood is a poet and arts administrator in Philadelphia, PA. He is the author of Ultra-Fine out now from blush lit and the apocryphal chapbook Sexy Unique Hollow Point. he has poems published in Peach Mag, Occulum, bedfellows magazine, Maudlin House and elsewhere. he is available on the world wide web @blackwhom
Gion Davis is a trans poet from Española, New Mexico where he grew up on a sheep ranch. His poetry has been featured in HAD, No Tokens, Sprung Formal, The Tiny and others. His second collection, Designated Stranger (Thirdhand Books, 2026), has been called an “of-the-moment but timeless Beat-style masterwork” in advance praise from Diane Seuss. For the past four years, he has been touring and performing his poetry with the DIY music collective Clementine Was Right and his contributions to songwriting have been highlighted in publications such as Paste and Stereogum. He currently lives in Denver, Colorado.
The June edition of Track Changes event with Emma Copley Eisenberg and Monika Ostrowska was like a pithy craft lecture (fiction AND poetry) and a symposium on femme melancholia and lethargy in one. The former, courtesy of our writers’ engaging ways of conveying their processes & influences; the latter, courtesy of their very complementary song selections.
♫ Track Changes 009: Emma Copley Eisenberg + Monika Ostrowska ♫
See you soon!
Yours in extra SPF,
♡ Alina