It’s National Poetry Month and Shark Reef Literary Magazine and Lopez Island Library are proud to present poet Gabriel Jesiolowski, the winner of the 2015 Benjamin Salman Award. They will be reading from his book of poems “As Burning Leaves” published April 2017 by Red Hen Press. We share their bio with you: “Gabriel Jesiolowski is a queer poet, artist, and curator. Born in the Midwest, they are the child of a textile artist and a psychologist. They work in a research-based practice using installation, photography, painting, performance, printed matter, and text to scuffle within the spaces of language and art. Over the past ten years they have taught art, writing, and gender studies at the university level and curated traveling and pop-up exhibitions. Their work has been shown in galleries such as Dumbo Arts Center, Future Tenants Gallery and the Flux Factory and appeared in print in Crossings: A Counter-Disciplinary Journal, So to Speak, and DIAGRAM, among others. They were the February 2016 writer in residence at The Alice Gallery in Seattle, and they are currently at work on a book of prose poems, an experimental film, and blueprints for a traveling apothecary.” In a month dedicated to poetry we are honored to host this remarkable poet.
“The geography of the body changes; its landmarks temporary; its border shifting,
in Gabriel Jesiolowski’s “As Burning Leaves”, a cartography of new forms, new ways of
being. These poems constitute a healing atlas, a journey of utmost compassion,
marked by both formal elegance and artful eloquence. What a remarkable book; it
will astonish and enchant you.”
—D. A. Powell, author of Lunch and A Guide for Boys