The 2025 Massachusetts Poetry Festival

This panel will share ideas for re-inventing the writing of the contemporary love poem, focusing on strategies that push back against cultural expectations meant to govern queer love on and off the page. By allowing a more embodied sexual existence into our poems, we can create more space for explorations of humor, grief, play, and even our deepest rage. This panel brings together a diverse group of queer poets to confront the stereotypes and taboos that often restrain such poems. Instead, we aim to create a space of safety, understanding, and shared respect as we discuss the tenderness it takes to really go there in our writing.