Wherever I’m At: An Anthology of Chicago Poetry, Chicago Literary Hall of Fame’s first major publication!
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Chicago Moth, cover art, Tony Fitzpatrick
Anthology Wins Best Book Award
The Midwest Modern Language Association has selected Wherever I’m at: An Anthology of Chicago Poetry for its prestigious 2022 Book of the Year prize:
“The MMLA would like to congratulate the 2022 Book Award winner, Donald G. Evans, the Founding Executive Director of the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame. Evans’s book, Wherever I’m At: An Anthology of Chicago Poetry, is the culmination of the project begun by the late poet-editor-teacher Robin Metz formerly of Knox College and includes a Foreword by Carlo Rotello. Wherever I’m At features the work of a widely diverse list of over 160 poets and artists, all living and all with strong ties to Chicagoland. The city is identifiable in every poem and piece of art in this definitive collection. The poems, individually, achieve excellence, but it is the sum of these parts that make the book extraordinary. This is a story of Chicago told in a way that has rarely, if ever, been done.
“The sheer magnitude and variety of talent represented in Wherever I’m At makes it a notable book. The relationship between poets and poems makes it an important book. This anthology’s design allows this large group of artists to explore a single city, a city ingrained, through experience, in their poetic conscience. Over the course of the book, readers move, with the poets and artists, through many neighborhoods, travel to legendary (sometimes lost) establishments, pop into the great cultural institutions, dive into historical moments, even ride the famous Ferris Wheel. What might seem at first a scattering of Chicago-ness coalesces into a story of a city that is different things to different people, with interests and ideas that sometime overlap and sometimes diverge, but always come from a place of deep love.”
From the Foreword
by scholar and author Carlo Rotella
“We can plot the poems, and the Chicago-shaped rush of insight and feeling each inspires, on the map of the city. There’s an Ashland and Throop poem, a Jackson and State poem, a poem about a young daredevil climbing a railroad bridge over the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, several Lake Michigan poems, a poem about the open-air gallery of DIY art incised in stone up and down the lakefront, at least one poem about Midwestern resentment and envy of coastal cosmopolitanism, many poems about the old neighborhood and the new neighborhood and how one became the other. And there are at least two railroad viaducts represented here. Any anthology of Chicago poetry should have viaducts, those everyday displacement-portals through which you pass to find the light, the world, and perhaps yourself just a little different on the other side.”
We Are Here to Stay, Alma Domínguez
The Poets
Elizabeth Alexander (Blues)
Jeffery Renard Allen (Hush Arbor)
Arthur Ade Amaker (Clive Jackson –What it is about Chicago)
Michael Anania (Steal Away)
Rey Andújar (Musa Paradisiaca (Avondale by the River))
Eduardo Arocho (Rainbow Shoes)
Beatriz Badikian-Gartler (How to make a fire (a sonnet))
Kay Ulanday Barrett (Albany Park/Logan Square 1993–2000, Chicago, IL)
Virginia Bell (The Father)
Monica Berlin (Triple Elegy)
Tara Betts (Donny & Minnie on the 72 Bus)
Marianne Boruch (Once At Berghoff’s)
Daniel Borzutzky (Lake Michigan, Scene 0)
Jan Bottiglieri (Inauguration Day, 2009)
Rosellen Brown (Lake Loving)
Emily Thornton Calvo (My Chicago)
Ana Castillo (Chi-Town Born and Bred, Twentieth Century Girl Propelled With Flare into the Third Millennium (c.1999))
Grady Chambers (Infinite Jest)
Maxine Chernoff (Again)
Bob Chicoine (The Quincy Stop)
Sandra Cisneros (Good Hotdogs)
Marta Collazo (Cullom Street)
Kristiana Rae Colón (where fun comes to die)
Nina Corwin (Whose Law?)
Vida Cross (Bronzeville at Night)
Carlos Cumpián (La Decima Musa)
Averill Curdy (In The Beginning)
Albert DeGenova (The Bus Stop)
Rachel DeWoskin (chance, chicago)
Joanne Diaz (A Thousand Flowers)
Stuart Dybek (Daredevil)
Olivia Maciel Edelman (Dear Lisi:)
Kelly Norman Ellis (Saturday Class: The Rat)
Elaine Equi (Ode to Chicago)
Calvin Forbes (State Street That Great Street)
Vincent Francone (Ashland Avenue)
Krista Franklin (In a condo on the southside of Chicago)
Naoko Fujimoto (Lake Michigan)
Cynthia Gallaher (Making Books at Hull House)
Rachel Galvin (Here in Chicago)
Edgar Garcia (The Planetarium)
Reginald Gibbons (Mekong Restaurant, 1986)
Regie Gibson (It’s A Teenage Thang)
Barry Gifford (The Season of Truth)
Juana Iris Goergen (Reconquest) Translated by Silvia Tandeciarz
Chris Solis Green (In The Blue Stairwell)
John Guzlowski (Looking for Work in Chicago)
Susan Hahn (Anna of Devon Avenue)
Duriel E. Harris (A Secret, Fatal Line)
Janet Ruth Heller (At Miller’s Pub)
Aleksandar Hemon (International Experience)
Edward Hirsch (I Missed The Demonstration)
Paul Hoover (The Angel Guardian Orphanage Florist)
Luisa A. Igloria (Dear Epictetus, this is to you attributed:)
Angela Jackson (Summer and the City)
Kara Jackson (walking down milwaukee avenue)
Raych Jackson (Sunrise)
Larry Janowski (Brotherkeeper)
Jac Jemc (Dermestidae)
Philip Jenks (Dear Chicago–)
Tyehimba Jess (Long Live the Checkerboard Lounge)
Richard Jones (Walking the Dog)
Mohja Kahf (I Cried for You in Chicago)
Peter Kahn (Upstairs at Ronny’s Steakhouse)
Lasana D. Kazembe (Chicago)
Mary Kinzie (The Mary Chapel)
Aviya Kushner (Night On Wellington Avenue, Chicago)
Quraysh Ali Lansana (conundrum)
Li-Young Lee (The Cleaving)
Viola Lee (Wild Abandon)
Haki R. Madhubuti (Chicago Is Illinois Country)
Tom Mandel (Remedial Memorabilia)
Maya Marshall (Montrose Beach, Before the Funeral)
Paul Martínez Pompa (How to Hear Chicago)
Marty McConnell (the fidelity of disagreement)
Daniel McGee (55th St. Underpass)
Campbell McGrath (The Sun)
James McManus (Smash and Scatteration)
Patricia McMillen (Yang)
Robin Metz (Midtown Lowdown)
Gwendolyn A. Mitchell (Remaking Maps in Chicago)
Faisal Mohyuddin (Ella Fitzgerald, Entering Chicago by Train Remembers Her Mother’s Voice)
Simone Muench (Dear Chicago–)
Dipika Mukherjee (Printers Row, Chicago)
Julie Parson Nesbitt (Ferris Wheel at Navy Pier)
Aimee Nezhukumatathil (When I Am Six)
Yolanda Nieves (Remembering the Division Street Riots)
Raúl Niño (February on Eighteenth Street)
Ugochi Nwaogwugwu (Lost and Found (The Soul of this Town))
Achy Obejas (On The Shores of Lake Michigan)
Dwight Okita (Notes For A Poem On Being Asian American)
José Olivarez (wherever i’m at that land is Chicago)
Elise Paschen (Kitihawa)
Coya Paz (list of wishes, first thing in the morning)
Useni Eugene Perkins (Bronzeville Poet)
Sterling Plumpp (Language)
C. Russell Price (Gay $)
Christina Pugh (Windy City)
Mike Puican (Tequila and Steve)
Ruben Quesada (When Winter Comes, 2030)
Ed Roberson (What Are We Drinking Here)
Luis J. Rodriguez (A Hungry Song in the Shadows)
Vincent Romero (A Chicago Street)
Kathleen Rooney (Pastoral)
Charles Rossiter (Memorial Day)
Jerome Sala (Hercules vs. the Tyrants of Babylon)
cin salach (construction)
Sara Salgado (The Last Poem About My Neighborhood)
Maureen Seaton (Woman Circling Lake)
Sun Yung Shin (Abracadabra, or A Spell for The Disappearance of Chicago’s 한인마을)
Barry Silesky (Tree of Heaven)
Marc Kelly Smith (Sandburg to Smith)
Patricia Smith (The West Side)
Jennifer Steele (In Search of Butterflies)
Heidy Steidlmayer (Two Women in a Revolving Door at Water Tower)
Ira Sukrungruang (There Is Nothing Else to Talk About)
Marvin Tate (Memories of a Dance Floor)
Robbie Q. Telfer (Chicago Wilderness)
Angela Narciso Torres (September, Chicago)
Tony Trigilio (In the Intersection, Jackson and State)
David Trinidad (Tiny Moon Notebook)
Mark Turcotte (Hawk Hour)
Luis Alberto Urrea (The Signal-to-Noise Ratio: Chicago Haiku)
Frank Varela (The Raccoons of Humboldt Park)
Johanny Vázquez Paz (A World of Our Own)
Michael Warr (Hallucinating at the Velvet Lounge)
Rachel Jamison Webster (Our Lady of The Underpass)
Phillip B. Williams (Homan and Chicago Ave.)
Keith S.Wilson (53rd street)
Rose Maria Woodson (Lawndale)
Emily Jungmin Yoon (Field)
avery r. young (base(d)on a prompt from Phillip B. Williams)
Reggie Scott Young (Crime in Bluesville)
Susan Yount (Chicago 2004)
Other
Carlo Rotella (Foreword)
Donald G. Evans (Introduction)
