Airea D. Matthews

2023

• Academy of American Poets Poet Laureate Fellowship

2022

• Poet Laureate of Philadelphia 2022-2023

2020

• Christian R. Lindbach Award for Distinguished Teaching, May 2020
• Pew Fellow, January 2021-January 2022

2018

• Poets and Writers, Innovative Poets to Watch, January 2018

2017

• Margaret Walker For My People Award

2016

• Yale Series of Younger Poets Winner
• Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers Award 
• Louis Untermeyer Scholar in Poetry, Bread Loaf Writers Conference 

2015

• Kresge Literary Arts Fellow 
• Pushcart Prize Nominee

2014

• Cave Canem Fellow
• Best New Poets Nominee 
• Pushcart Prize Nominee

2013

• Pushcart Prize Nominee 
• Callaloo Fellow 

2012 and earlier

• Cave Canem Fellow | 2012
• Michael R. Gutterman Poetry Prize | Hopwood Award | 2012
• Rackham Merit Fellow | Helen Zell Writers’ Program | University of Michigan | 2011
• Women of the World Poetry Slam, Runner Up | 2010
• National Organization of Women, Special Recognition Award | 2010
• Women of the World Poetry Slam, 3rd Ranked | 2008
• Detroit Grand Poetry Slam Champion | 2008
• Rustbelt Regional Poetry Slam Champion, Individual Competition | 2008
• Rackham Merit Fellow | Ford School of Public Policy | University of Michigan | 2002 

FULL-LENGTH COLLECTIONS

May 2023

Bread and Circus

BREAD AND CIRCUS REVIEWS

Publisher's Weekly

The Poetry Foundation

The Washington Post

The Irish Times

The Poetry Book Society (UK)

March 2017

Simulacra, 2016 Winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award, Yale University Press 

SIMULACRA REVIEWS

The New Yorker

The Washington Post

The Rumpus

Publisher's Weekly

American Microreviews

Tupelo Quarterly

POETRY

2023:

• "The Water Mothers" | Visual Collaboration with Laylah Amatuallah Barrayn | ADI Magazine
• "Anna Mae's Woodlawn Baptist Choir Director" | Poetry Foundation
• "The Ancestors School a Basic Bitch" | Poetry Daily
• "The Broke Diet," "Ain't No Snitch" | Poetry Ireland

2022:

• "Subtext for Troubled Times," "elemental" | Mosaic Literary Magazine
• "Eviction," "nostalgia," "Purblind," "The Troubles," "Severance," "elegy for the moaner, 2016" | Georgia Review Winter issue
• "On Making An Essential Nigga" | Obsidian 
• "Legacy" and "Ars Poetica, 1979" | Last Call, An Anthology on Addiction and Loss | Sarabande Books 
• "Meeting Anne Sexton," | Zoeglossia Poem of the Week January 2022

2021 :

• "At The Worktable: A Praxis for Approaching an Antiracist Standard of Care in Criticism" |  Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice at Rutgers University
• "Ars Poetica, 1979" "Ars Poetica, 2019" "Mayfly" | Virginia Quarterly Review
• "9am Working Class Bedtime Story" | Gulf Coast 
• "If Ain't Is: An Essay on Gertrude Stein and My Grandmother" | The Poet Speaks Anthology
  

2020:

• "American Ouroboros" | Night Heron Barks | Summer 2020
• "Inherited Divide" | Zocalo Public Square | August 2020

2019:

• "American Conjunctions" | On the Seawall | Winter 2019
• "Logical Disjunction" | Tin House | Spring 2019
• "Letters to My Children on Time-Dependent Effects and Attention" | Los Angeles Review of Books | Spring 2019
• "Etymology" | www.poets.org | Poem of the Day May 2019
• "Black Ecstatic Ode" | Michigan Quarterly Review and Lithub | Summer 2019

2018

• "When Can We Expect Payment" | Cortland Review|Spring 2018 
• "House Nigga's Clean Finish" | Callaloo |Summer  2018

2017

• "Con (the remix) | The Rumpus | January 2017
• "Sekhmet's Conceit" "Pious" | The Harvard Advocate |Spring 2017 
• "Closed Captioning for the Black Animus | Cordite Review |Winter 2017 
• "Temptation of the Composer" | www.poets.org Academy of American Poets

2016

• "Descent of the Composer" | www.poets.org (Poem of the Day) 
• "Confessions from Here" (reprinted from Academy of American Poets), "On Meeting Want Next Time," "Letters to My Would-Be Lover on Dolls and Repeating" | Callaloo
• "Confessions from Here" | www.poets.org (Poem of the Day)

2015 

• “Gryllacridadae” | The Volta 
• “If My Late Grandmother Were Gertrude Stein” | Best American Poetry 
• “Sexton Texts from a Bird Conservatory,” “Confessions from Here” | American Poet 
• “Sexton Texts on Independence Day,” “Sexton Texts During Polar Vortex” | Four Way Review 

2014

• “-Icity” | Vinyl 
• “Prelude,” “Hero(i)n” | Muzzle 
• “Positive Curvature,” “Black Hole Observed Over Time” | The Indiana Review 
• “Narcissus Tweets” | The Baffler 
• “March 1969” | Women’s Studies Quarterly
• “Swindle” (online poem of the week) | Missouri Review 
• “If My Late Grandmother Were Gertrude Stein” | KINFOLKS 
• “Letters to My Would-Be. . .” | Callaloo 

 

INTERVIEWS

2017-Present

• Poetry Off the Shelf | July 2023
• Living Writers WCBN | June 2023
• Free Library of Philadelphia Writer's Series | June 2023
• Two Poet Laureates PBS Newshour | November 2022
• Interview with WHYY | August 2022
• Black Hauntology Interview with Jonah Mixon Webster | August 2021
• Interviewing Arisa White on Whose Your Daddy |  June 2021 
• VS. Poetry Foundation | September 2020
• Poetry Extension | August 2019
• Divedapper | April 2018
• Commonplace | December 2017
• LoveBlackGirls.com | December 2017

FLASH NON-FICTION/ESSAYS

2023

• "Barbie Taught Me The Power of Play" | Harper's Bazaar | July 2023
• "The Magical Space Where Fun Is Every Child's Birthright" | The New York Times | July 2023
• "Echoes of Plato's Dialogue in Sexton Texts Poems" |  Personal Best Critical Anthology

2019

• "On Sister Solidarity" | Era of Ignition: Coming of Age During a Time of Revolution and Rage  | Crown Publishing | March 2019

2014

• “The Cost of The Floss” | Michigan Quarterly Review 
• "The Cross or The Pill” | Michigan Quarterly Review 
• “Meeting Wittgenstein at The Playscape” | Michigan Quarterly Review 
• “Animalia Repeating” | Michigan Quarterly Review 
• “The Case of the Disaporic Haints” | Michigan Quarterly Review 

2013

• “The Dentist’s Wife.” “The Dog Whisperer’s Wife,” “The Mine Owner’s Wife” | SLAB 

 

POETRY REVIEWS

2014

• Dear Lil Wayne by Lauren Ireland | Scout Poetry
• Patter by Douglas Kearney | Scout Poetry 

FEATURED ARTIST

2015

“Dead of Winter Non Sequitur,” Directed by Cass Corridor Films

2014

Roadtrip Nation, PBS 

2008-2010

Poetry Slam Inc., Women of the World

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER/ARTIST

2009

Venus Disrobed (Performed Poetry Collection), Directed by Steve Coy

2021-2023

University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine

"Addiction, Trauma, and Obsession in Writing"

Texas Book Festival

"Traversing the Racial Periphery"

 Favorite Poets Favorite Poet Teaching Series

"The Legacy of Margaret Walker"

Poetry Foundation Secondary Teacher Training | Miami, FL

"Managing Conflict using a Worktable Model"

Rutgers University Inaugural Poets and Scholars Retreat | New Brunswick, NJ

"At The Worktable: A Praxis for Approaching a Standard of Care in Criticism"

Rosemont College | Rosemont, PA

"Sense Age of Sight: Visual/Textual Collaborations in the High-Tech Age"

Arizona State University | Tempe, AZ

"Transtextuality as a Future"

2019

Warren Wilson College | Asheville, NC

"Sense Age of Sight: Visual/Textual Collaborations in the High-Tech Age"

Library of Congress | Washington, DC

"Afrofuturist Thought"

2018

Oakland University | Rochester, MI

"The Apollonian Poem"

Paul Robeson Museum | Philadelphia, PA

"The Apollonian Poem and the Black Imagination"

New York University | NY, NY 

"Orr and The Four Temperaments of Poetry"

Poets House NYC | NY, NY

"Orr and The Four Temperaments of Poetry" for Winter Tangerine

2017

Jackson State University

"Yale and The Legacy of Margaret Walker" 

2016

University of Michigan Writing Race Series

“I’ll Take That: Cultural Appropriation in Creative Work"

2014

 Poetry and Pie Series, Rochester, NY

“The Non-Sequitur and Poetry"

Pink Door Womens' Writing Retreat, Rochester, NY

“Get Free: Negative Capability in Poetry"

2013

 University of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA

“The Hardest Part: Narrative in Poetry"

2010 and earlier

Women of the World Poetry Slam, Detroit, MI and Columbus, OH

“Getting Ugly on Stage"

 Oakland County Community College, Auburn Hills, MI 

“Bare Bones: The Use of Voice and Psychological Gesture in Performance Poetry"

Detroit Womens’ Economic Council, Detroit, MI

“Freeing the Mind: Incarcerated Women and the Arts"

Oakland County Community College, Royal Oak, MI 

“Getting Naked on Stage: Performing and Escaping Inhibitions” 

Prison Creative Arts Linkage Conference, Ann Arbor, MI

“Performing Art"

 National StopMax Conference, Philadelphia, PA

“Art as a Means of Struggle and Survival"

2023:

• Free Library of Philadelphia in Conversation with Reginald Dwayne Betts
• Free Library of Philadelphia in Conversation with Tariq "Black Thought" Trotter
• Free Library of Philadelphia in Conversation with Safiya Sinclair
• Milton Academy, Milton, MA
• The Phillis Wheatley Poetry Festival, Jackson, MS
• Brooklyn Book Festival, Brooklyn, NY
• Texas Book Festival, Austin, TX
• Poetry Foundation, Chicago, IL
• University of Michigan Gerald Ford School of Policy, Ann Arbor, MI 
• Parkway Council, Philadelphia, PA
• Aspen Institute, Washington, DC
• Free Library of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA
• Harvard Bookstore, Cambridge, MA 
• Greenlight Bookstore, Brooklyn, NY
• London Review of Books, London, UK
• Midtown Scholar Bookstore, Harrisburg, PA
• The Room Project, Detroit, MI 
• Literati Bookstore, Ann Arbor, MI
• Haymarket House, Chicago, IL
• Harrisburg Community College, Harrisburg, PA
• Philadelphia Free Library, Philadelphia, PA
• Soul Sister Review, Online

2022:

• Free Library of Philadelphia in Conversation with Ocean Vuong
• University of Maryland, College Park, MD
• Dartmouth College, Robert Hayden Conference
• Passaic County Community College, Paterson, NJ
• University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA
• University of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA
• The Athaneum, Philadelphia, PA
• Anaphora Literary Arts, Online
• Lincoln Center, New York, NY
• The Clearing,  Online
• Interfaith Philadelphia, Philadelphia,  PA
• Dauphin County Library, Dauphin County, PA

2021

• University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA
• Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ
• Holy Family College, Philadelphia, PA 
• George Washington University, Washington, DC
• Cave Canem Annual Retreat, Online

2020

• University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
• The University of Washington in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO
• The University of Maryland, College Park, MD
• University of Illinois, Chicago, IL
• Gather in Poetry, Academy of American Poets (online)

2019

• Callaloo Conference with Natasha Tretheway, Ishion Hutchinson, Gregory Pardlo and Herman Beavers, University of Penn, Philadelphia, PA
• Kelly Writers' House with Keetje Kupers and Laura Mullen, University of Penn, Philadelphia, PA
• Yale University with Carl Phillips, Louise Gluck, Carolyn Forche, Peter Streckfus and Yanyi, New Haven, CT
• The Rona Jaffe Foundation with Eileen Pollack, New York, NY
• The Ruth Stone Foundation, Putney, VT
• Warren Wilson College, Asheville, NC
• Folger Shakespeare Library with Tananarive Due and N.K. Jemisin, Washington, DC

2018

• Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL
• Goucher College, MD
• New York University, NY
• University of Pittsburgh Center for African American Poetics with Rickey Laurentiis and Safiya Sinclair, Pittsburgh, PA
• Oakland University, Oakland, MI
• Whitman College, Walla Walla, WA

2017

• Adelphi University MFA, NY
• Barnard College, NY 
• Callaloo 41st Anniversary Reading. Georgetown University
• Jackson State University, Jackson, MI
• Nebraska Writers' Collective, Lincoln, NE
• Miami Book Festival, Miami, FL
• Midwest Writers Walk, Chelsea, MI 
• The Poetry Project, NYC, NY 
• Temple University, Philadelphia, PA

2016

• Callaloo 40th Anniversary Reading with Gregory Pardlo and Yusef Koumanyakaa, NYC, NY (Oct.)
• Rona Jaffe Writers' Foundation Reading, NYC, NY (Sept.)
• Louis Untermeyer Poetry Scholar Reading, Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Ripton, VT
• Literary Detroit, Signal Return, Detroit, MI 
• Reading with Rickey Laurentiis and Ladan Osman, Literati Bookstore, Ann Arbor, MI 
• Reading with Tarfia Faizullah and Tamar Boyadjian, Literati Bookstore, Ann Arbor, MI 
• Off-Site Reading with The Offing, AWP Los Angeles  

2014

• Write-A-House, MOCAD, Detroit, MI
• Cannes Lions Festival, Filmed Poem Screening, Cannes, France 
• “Social Justice and Art: Unconventional Alumni in Profile” Panel, Univ. of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA
• “Poet, Citizen, Artist, Process,” Michigan Literary Network Radio, Detroit, MI
• “All My Pretty Ones” Reading Tour, Denver, Salt Lake City, Omaha, Columbus
• Literary Detroit: Signal Return, Detroit, MI 

2013

• Robert Hayden Centennial, Ann Arbor, MI
• “Season of the Witch” Reading Tour with Rachel McKibbens, San Francisco, Berkeley, Portland, Seattle
• Zell Fellow 3rd-Year Reading, Literati Bookstore, Ann Arbor, MI
• Oakland Community College Literary Festival, Auburn Hills, MI
• Zell Fellow 2nd-Year Reading, Helmut Stern Auditorium, Ann Arbor, MI 

2012

• Skazat, Sweetwaters, Ann Arbor, MI
• Writing Wrongs, Columbus, OH
• Seattle Poetry Series, Town Hall, Seattle, WA
• Zell Fellow 1st-year Reading, Ann Arbor, MI

2010 and earlier

• Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit, ART/Work Exhibit 
• National Organization of Women, Women's Equality Day
• Detroit Women's Economic Council, Detroit, MI 
• Women of the World Poetry Slam, Columbus, OH 
• Oakland County Community College, Department of English Literature Festival, Auburn Hills, MI
• Go! Comedy Ferndale Improv Show, Royal Oak, MI
• Seattle Poetry Series, Seattle WA
• United Nations Association Greater Detroit, Detroit MI 
• Writing Wrongs Poetry Series, Columbus, OH 
• Central United Methodist Poetry Show, Detroit, MI 
• National Congress of Negro Women Anniversary, Detroit MI
• Cantab Poetry Series, Boston, MA 
• Scarab Club, Springfed Literary Series, Detroit, MI
• Red Comma Cafe presents The ShapeShifters, Birmingham, MI
• University of Michigan Artist Exhibit, Ann Arbor, MI
• Women of the World Poetry Slam, Detroit, MI
• Oakland County Community College, Dept. of English LitOut Loud Series
• Vancouver Poetry Series, Vancouver, BC
• Drake Underground, Toronto, ON
• Nuyorican Poetry Cafe, New York, NY
• The Last Poets, Ann Arbor, MI
• Boll Family YMCA Poetry Show, Detroit, MI
• Michigan State University, Lansing, MI
• National StopMax Conference, Philadelphia, PA
• Women of the World Poetry Slam, Detroit, MI
• Ann Arbor Public Schools, Ann Arbor MI
• The Filmore (Former State Theatre) Detroit, MI
• National Public Radio, Detroit, MI
• Max M. Fisher Music Theatre, Detroit, MI
• Music Hall, Detroit, MI
• Zoae Arts Series, Bowery Poetry Club, NY, NY 

READING TOURS

2014

• “All My Pretty Ones” with Rachel McKibbens| Las Vegas | Denver | Omaha | Columbus

2013 

• “Season of the Witch” with Rachel McKibbens| San Fran | Oakland | Berkeley | Portland | Seattle