Once a City Said (Paperback)

A Louisville Poets Anthology edited by Louisville native and acclaimed Horsepower author Joy Priest.

Conceived in the aftermath of city-wide protests in 2020, Once a City Said showcases the polyvocal communities of Louisville, Kentucky, a city celebrated for its bourbon, basketball, and horseracing, but long fraught with racial injustice, police corruption, and social unrest.

Priest takes the city’s narrative out of the mouths of politicians, news anchors, and police chiefs, and puts it into the mouths of poets. What emerges is an intimate report of a city misshapen by segregation, tourism, and ruptures in the public trust. Featuring thirty-seven acclaimed and emerging poets—including Mitchell L. H. Douglas, Erin Keane, Ryan Ridge, and Hannah L. Drake— Once a City Said archives the traditions and icons, the landmarks and spirits, the portraits and memories of Derby City.

This publication is supported by individual donors who gave to the 2021 Fund for the Arts ArtsMatch campaign. Matching funds were made possible by Fund for the Arts in partnership with LG&E and KU Foundation. 

Joy Priest was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky across the street from the world's most famous horse racing track. She is the author of Horsepower (Pitt Poetry Series, 2020), winner of the Donald Hall Prize for Poetry, and is a National Endowment for the Arts fellow. Her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series and The Atlantic, among others, as well as in commissions for the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH) and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). Her essays have appeared in The Bitter Southerner, Poets & Writers, and ESPN. Priest received her MFA in poetry with a certificate in Women & Gender Studies from the University of South Carolina.

 

V. Joshua Adams is the author of a chapbook, Cold Affections (Plan B Press, 2018). Work of his has appeared or is forthcoming in Bennington Review, Posit, Painted Bride Quarterly, Tupelo Quarterly, and elsewhere. A former editor of Chicago Review, as well as a translator and critic, he teaches literature and writing at the University of Louisville.

 

makalani bandele is a Louisville native and Affrilachian Poet. He has received fellowships from Cave Canem Foundation, Millay Colony, Kentucky Arts Council, and Vermont Studio Center. Currently a candidate for the MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Kentucky, bandele’s work has been published in several anthologies and widely in literary journals. The author of hellfightin’ and under the aegis of a winged mind, awarded the 2019 Autumn House Press Poetry Prize, poems from under the aegis have been published in Prairie Schooner, 32poems, and North American Review.

 

Mackenzie Berry is from Louisville, Kentucky. Her poetry has been published in Vinyl, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Hobart, and Blood Orange Review, among others. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison through the First Wave Program and Goldsmiths, University of London, she is currently pursuing an MFA in Poetry at Cornell University. Her debut poetry collection 'Slack Tongue City' is forthcoming from Sundress Publications in 2022. You can find her work at mackenzieberry.com.

 

Steve Cambron’s poetry has appeared in Literary Leo, Word Hotel and Heartland Trail Review and have one two Green River Writers awards. His poetry was choreographed and featured in the Louisville Ballet’s 2018 Choreographer’s Showcase. He is the creator and host of Flying Out Loud, a monthly reading series featuring some of Louisville’s finest writers and poets. He is currently working on an MFA at the Eastern Kentucky University Bluegrass Writer’s Studio.

 

Jeremy Michael Clark’s poems have appeared in West Branch, Poetry Northwest, Southern Review, and elsewhere. He holds degrees from the University of Pennsylvania's School of Social Policy and Practice and Rutgers University-Newark, where he received his MFA. Born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky, he is a licensed social worker living in Brooklyn.

 

Bernard Clay is a Louisville, Kentucky, native who grew up in the shadow of the now demolished Southwick housing projects on the “West End” of town. He has spent most of his life in Kentucky cultivating an appreciation, over the years, for the state’s disappearing natural wonders and unique but sparse urban areas. ​ Bernard received an MFA in creative writing from the University of Kentucky Creative Writing Program and is a member of the Affrilachian Poets collective. His work has been published in various journals and anthologies. He currently resides on a farm in eastern Kentucky with his wife Lauren. English Lit is his first book.

 

Darcy Cleaver, teacher, poet, and playwright, lives in Louisville, Kentucky with her wife and four dogs. Darcy moved away in the '80s to pursue the gay agenda; she was overjoyed to return years later to a much more inclusive city.

 

Ron Davis is a poet and visual artist whose narrative works range from social commentary to afrofuturism, often intertwining the societal with the speculative. a louisville native, he now resides in lexington, ky with his partner Crystal Wilkinson.

 

A native of Louisville’s West End, Mitchell L. H. Douglas is the author of dying in the scarecrow’s arms, \blak\ \al-fə bet\, winner of the Persea Books Lexi Rudnitsky/Editor's Choice Award, and Cooling Board: A Long-Playing Poem, an NAACP Image Award and Hurston/Wright Legacy Award nominee. He is a 2021 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow in poetry, a Cave Canem alum, and Associate Professor of English at Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis (IUPUI).

 

Hannah Drake is a blogger, activist, public speaker, poet, and author of 11 books. She writes commentary on politics, feminism, and race and her work has been featured online at Cosmopolitan, The Bitter Southerner, The Lily, Harper’s Bazaar and Revolt TV. Hannah is the author of several works of poetry, Hannah‘s Plea-Poetry for the Soul, Anticipation, Life Lived In Color, In Spite of My Chains, For Such A Time As This and So Many Things I Want to Tell You-Life Lessons for the Journey. Hannah was selected as one of the Best of the Best in Louisville, Kentucky for her poem Spaces and recently was honored as a Kentucky Colonel, the highest title of honor bestowed by the Kentucky Governor recognizing an individual’s noteworthy accomplishments and outstanding service to community, state, and nation. In 2021 Hannah work as an activist and poet was profiled in the New York Times, highlighting her work and the (Un)Known Project that seeks to recognize the known and unknown names of Black people that were enslaved in Kentucky and throughout the nation.

 

Jessica Farquhar is the author of Dear Motorcycle Enthusiast, a chapbook published by The Magnificent Field in 2020. She holds an MFA from Purdue, where she was the assistant director of Creative Writing. You can find her work in recent issues of Can We Have Our Ball Back? and Bear Review.

 

Isiah Fish is a queer poet & performer from Louisville, Kentucky. He holds an M.F.A. from Southern Illinois University Carbondale where he worked as an editor for Crab Orchard Review. His work has been published in Albion Review, Blood Orange Review, Foglifter, & Miracle Monocle.

 

Robin Garner is a spoken word artist, published poet, host & keynote speaker. She utilizes her passion for poetry & spoken word to uplift, encourage and ignite her audience. Inspired by own adversities and triumphs, she is best known for her raw, transparent and uncensored narrative in regards to women and their struggle with loving, living and maintaining their own identity.

 

Martha Greenwald is the Founding Director of WhoWeLostKY.org, a project encouraging Kentuckians to write about loved ones lost to Covid-19. She is the winner of the 2020 Yeats Prize for Poetry. Her first collection of poetry, Other Prohibited Items, was the winner of the Mississippi Review Poetry Series. Her work has appeared in such journals as New World Writing, The Threepenny Review, Slate, Poetry, The Sewanee Review and Best New Poets. She has held a Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford and been awarded fellowships from the North Carolina and Kentucky Arts Councils, the Breadloaf and Sewanee Writer’s Conferences, Yaddo, and the Vermont Studio Center. She taught as an adjunct professor for eighteen years at the University of Louisville.

 

David Haydon is a poet and essayist originally from Springfield, KY. David is currently a Ph.D. student at the University of Southern California, studying nonfiction. David's work explores Southern queerness, maternity, and significations of the body.

 

David Higdon is a writer from Kentucky. His work has been published or is forthcoming in Exposition Review, Lucky Jefferson, Coffin Bell Journal, Naugatuck River Review, and the tiny journal. He is the 2021 winner of The Grand Prix Prize from the Kentucky State Poetry Society. He lives with his family in Louisville, Ky.

 

John James is the author of The Milk Hours (Milkweed, 2019), selected by Henri Cole for the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize. His poems appear in Boston Review, Kenyon Review, Gulf Coast, PEN Poetry Series, Best American Poetry, and elsewhere. Raised in Louisville, he is pursuing a PhD in English at the University of California, Berkeley.

Erin Keane is the author of three collections of poems and is the editor of The Louisville Anthology from Belt Publishing. She is editor in chief at Salon.com and is on the faculty of Spalding University's School of Creative and Professional Writing. She lives in Louisville.

 

Anna Leigh Knowles is the author of Conditions of The Wounded (Wisconsin Poetry Series, 2021). Her work appears in Blackbird, Indiana Review, Memorious, The Missouri Review Online, Poetry Northwest, RHINO, storySouth, Hunger Mountain, Thrush Poetry Journal, and Tin House Online. A recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Agency Award, she has also received scholarships from the Appalachian Writers’ Workshop, Bear River Writers’ Workshop, the New Harmony Writers’ Workshop, the San Miguel de Allende Writers’ Conference, and a Female Leadership Residency at Omega Institution. She holds an MFA from Southern Illinois University-Carbondale and a BA from University of Colorado-Denver. For more information, visit annaleighknowles.com.

 

Kristi Maxwell is the author of seven books of poems, including My My (Saturnalia Books, 2020); Realm Sixty-four, editor's choice for the Sawtooth Poetry Prize; Hush Sessions, editor's choice for the Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize; and Re-, finalist for the National Poetry Series. She's an associate professor of English at the University of Louisville.

 

Kentucky poet, folklorist, and educator Sarah McCartt-Jackson's work has appeared in Bellingham Review, Indiana Review, Journal of American Folklore, The Maine Review, Tidal Basin Review, The Louisville Review, and others. She is the recipient of an Al Smith Individual Artist Fellowship from the Kentucky Arts Council, and has served as artist-in-residence for four National Parks: Great Smoky Mountains, Acadia, Catoctin Mountain National Park, and Homestead. She is the author of Stonelight (Airlie Press), which won the Phillip H. McMath Award, Weatherford Award in Poetry, and Airlie Prize. Her chapbooks include Calf Canyon (selected for publication by Louisville poet Kiki Petrosino), Vein of Stone, and Children Born on the Wrong Side of the River. She is an elementary school teacher in Jefferson County.

 

Erin L. McCoy holds an MFA in creative writing and an MA in Hispanic studies from the University of Washington. Her work has appeared in the "Best New Poets" anthology twice, selected by Natalie Diaz and Kaveh Akbar. She won second place in the 2019–2020 Rougarou Poetry Contest, judged by CAConrad, and is currently a finalist for the Missouri Review’s 2021 Miller Audio Prize. Her poetry and fiction have been published or are forthcoming in West Branch, Narrative, Bennington Review, Conjunctions, Pleiades, DIAGRAM, Nimrod International Journal, and other publications. She is from Louisville, Kentucky. Her website is erinlmccoy.com.

 

Glenna Meeks is an emerging poet and filmmaker from Louisville, Kentucky. She lives in NYC and comes back to Louisville yearly. Her poems have been published in The London Reader and Taunt Magazine. She is writing a memoir about the people and places that have made her.

 

Sunshine Meyers is a self-professed Louisville native, speech-language pathologist, artist, and closet poet. While these titles may seem disparate, they each convey her primary passions of communication and self-expression. As a bisexual woman and survivor of long-term abuse with PTSD, Sunshine aims to use her poetry to embolden the voice of others who are all too used to living in silence.

 

Marta Miranda-Straub is a poet and storyteller who has spent her life working towards equity and inclusion and advancing social and economic justice for marginalized communities. She is the author of Cradled by Skeletons: A Life in Poems and Essays (Shadelandhouse Modern Press 2019). Until the age of twelve Marta was raised in Pinar del Rio, Cuba. Marta now lives and works in Louisville, Kentucky, and she describes herself affectionately as a Cubalachian—a combination of Cuban and Appalachian. She was inducted into the Affrilachian Poets by Frank X Walker in 2009. For many years she was the director of the Center for Women & Families in Louisville. Marta is a queer Latinx woman who lives and works at the intersection of identities, ethnicity, race, gender, and sexualities—applying an intersectional feminist lens to all she does. She has over forty years of experience in organizational and clinical social work practice, during which she has held multiple roles, including professor, social researcher, author, psychotherapist, executive leader, fundraising professional, community organizer, advocate/activist, executive coach, facilitator, trainer, and public speaker.  

 

Ellen Birkett Morris is the author of Surrender, a poetry chapbook, Lost Girls, a short story collection, and Abide, a poetry chapbook forthcoming from Seven Kitchens Press. Her poetry has appeared in The Clackamas Literary Review, Juked, Gastronomica, and Inscape, among other journals. Morris won top prize in the 2008 Binnacle Ultra-Short Edition and was a finalist for the 2019 and 2020 Rita Dove Poetry Prize.

 

Lance G. Newman is a 'Renaissance Man' who wears several hats; the writer, the poet, the actor, the playwright, the artist, the teacher and the student. He is affectionately refer to as 'Mr. SpreadLove,' and for the past twenty years, he's been trying to put the l-o-v-e in Louisville.

 

Nguyễn Vũ Ngọc Uyên is a Vietnamese-American immigrant, a social worker and a therapist. She lives in South Louisville with her husband and their two cats and two dogs.

 

The work of Robert L. Penick has appeared in The Louisville Review, The Pikeville Review, Kudzu, Literary LEO and Trajectory within Kentucky, and journals like The Hudson Review, North American Review and Plainsongs without. More of his work can be found at theartofmercy.net

 

Joy Priest is the author of Horsepower (Pitt Poetry Series, 2020), selected as the winner of the Donald Hall Prize for Poetry by U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey. She is the recipient of a 2021 National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and the 2019-2020 Fine Arts Work Center fellowship, and the winner of the Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize from the American Poetry Review. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous publications, including the Academy of American Poets' Poem-a-Day series, The Atlantic, and Kenyon Review among others, as well as in commissions for the Museum of Fine Arts Houston (MFAH) and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). Joy is currently an Inprint MD Anderson Foundation fellow and doctoral student in Literature & Creative Writing at the University of Houston.

 

Ryan Ridge was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky. He is the author of four chapbooks as well as five books, including *New Bad News* (Sarabande Books 2020). His writing has appeared in American Book Review, DIAGRAM, Denver Quarterly, Passages North, Post Road, Salt Hill, Santa Monica Review, Southwest Review, and elsewhere. An assistant professor at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah, he codirects the Creative Writing Program. In addition to his work as a writer and teacher, he edits the literary magazine Juked, and lives in Salt Lake City with the writer Ashley Farmer. He plays bass in the Snarlin’ Yarns.

 

Alex Shull is a long time Louisvillian, lifelong poet and software developer by trade.

 

Rheonna Nicole is a poet, artist, spoken word competitor and entrepreneur. A native Louisvillian, she graduated from Valley High School and studied commercial arts at Murray State University. Rheonna has been a featured speaker at The National Council of Negro Women's Martin Luther King Jr. brunch, Girls IdeaFest, World Festival, Kentucky Women's Writers Conference, Louisville Literary Arts reading series and Indiana University Poetry Festival. She has been featured in Today's Woman Magazine, Leo Weekly, Insider Louisville, Courier Journal, and Spalding University’s Art & Literary Hotel. In 2016 she competed in the Women of the World Poetry Slam, ranking sixth place amongst 96 other female spoken word artists in the nation. Now a published poet, she has created her own organization called Lipstick Wars Poetry Slam (a partnership with ArtsReach of the Kentucky Center for the Arts), an all-woman poetry slam competition where she offers a platform for poets to speak out against the injustices and celebrations of womanhood.

 

Aileen Tierney is currently based in Louisville, Kentucky. She holds a BA in English from the University of Kentucky.

 

Alissa Vance is a community activist, poet, and writer, born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky. In her daily life, Alissa fights for housing and racial equity, freedom and liberty for all people, and justice still for Travis Nagdy and Breonna Taylor.

 

Ken Walker is the author of Twenty Glasses of Water (Diez, 2014) and Antworten (Greying Ghost, 2017). His work can be found in Boston Review, Hyperallergic, The Poetry Project Newsletter, The Brooklyn Rail, The Seattle Review, Atlas Review, Lumberyard, Tammy, and many other publications.

 

Jasmine Wigginton is a youth worker and a writer from Louisville, Kentucky, and is currently located in Baltimore, Maryland. Through her writing, she explores intergenerational trauma, her ancestors, and the inherent magic of being Black and from Kentucky.