Poetry Connection | Connecting with Artists and Performers in New Orleans

I recently had the privilege of performing at the Domino in New Orleans. Claudia Duran, who now lives in New Orleans, teamed up with LMNL Arts, a nonprofit organization that organizes poetry and play series, writing workshops and more. As the name implies, LMNL or liminal without the vowels, brings literary works to the stage and celebrates transitional spaces, seeking to be an all-inclusive venue that presents a variety of performance artists. The nonprofit is run by Michelle Antoinette Nicholson and Nikki Ummel.

In Sunday’s iteration, LMNL presented a playwriting and poetry summer festival, with staged readings of one-act plays and two poetic performances, featuring the work of José Torres-Tama and myself. Jose’s work on immigration issues falls more heavily in the performance art category and is theatrical and musical. He performed an excerpt from his one-man show,  Aliens, Immigrants, & Other Evildoers. My set consisted of three poems and their companion songs on guitar. I don’t often have the opportunity to share the songs I have written that are inspired by my poems. I was happy to participate in LMNL’s summer festival while I was in town.

Claudia currently lives and works as a teacher, while maintaining her connection and work with Chicanas, Cholas y Chisme, a theater group based in East L.A. Her vision to unite Latin writers from across the country to share their stories in New Orleans came to fruition, thanks to LMNL. Both Claudia and Michelle are committed to providing a space for creatives to shine and share their work. Claudia was happy to see this program finally happen. She had been in conversation with Michelle for over a year. “We wanted to unite Latin writers from across the country to share their beautiful stories. This summer, they were able to bring writers from Louisiana and California representing Mexico, Ecuador, Honduras, and El Salvador together to read their work. Plays, screenplays, musicals, poetry, and spoken word were among the many formats in which the writers presented at Summer Fest.”

Thanks to program manager Chris Wecklein, LMNL has found a home and performance space at the Domino, a bar and event space on St. Claude Avenue in New Orleans. The venue is reminiscent of Santa Barbara’s Wylde Works on State Street. LMNL also works with a variety of locations from bookstores to pie shops to bars. “My impulse is to bring other people along with me,” said Michelle. “People come up with ideas and we make programming happen.”

As much as Michelle Nicholson promotes creativity in others, she is always working on her own poetry in between LMNL programming and teaching creative writing. She won the 2021 Andrea Saunders Gereighty Poetry Award from the Academy of American Poets and her debut poetry book, Around the Gate, launched this month from Word Works and was selected for the 2024 Hilary Tham Capital Collection.

This week’s poetry connection features three unpublished poems by M.A. Nicholson from New Orleans.

Age 9, Cherry Pie

By M.A. Nicholson 

Poison keeping our pace, pumping 
hi-pitched crescendos as we race: I have 
memorized this steady pump of thigh, 
this crank of ankle beside the greased chain,
this point-and-flex of foot on pedal. Perfectly
timed, we ride in sync to what blares from
the boom box perched on your handlebars.
So sweet, this salty flash of heat. Flash 
of boxwood and ranch house. Flash 
of cream brick then red. We speak 
of nothing. Ages apart, we sing the words 
but ignore the lyrics. Ignore mandates 
to stay on the sidewalk. No one yet knows
how you will be cut off, at the knee. Know one yet
knows the price of your sweet tooth. All we know 
is we will flip the cassette and keep circling the block
until we witness the most beautiful sunset made 
possible by the refinery clouding up our horizon.

43°17’48.0″N 122°53’36.6″W

By M.A. Nicholson  

M only took us as far as the bay, scoffed at the
wonder of seals slapping around between bouncing
yachts, boardwalk turned dance floor, sun
spinning, a giant disco ball or a queen decked out
in a trillion tiny mirrors to turn the light on us, to
drive darkness out into the night. Not a single
reservation available beyond I-5 for two days. I’m
tired of gas station parking lots, can’t stomach a
continental breakfast, found myself disappointed
by the foggy coastline at Seal Bay after 11 days of
steering. I second-guessed myself. I wondered if I
should have stayed in Seattle a little longer, until
the friend I remember remembered himself. I just
kept driving, stopping only to fill up the tank, to
grab a local brew, to search the web until I located
the only park open on the map. Paid the North
Umpqua my respects with scented smoke drifting
downstream. Knee-deep, I was unaware of the
refugee camp down the road, had  no idea that
today I would rise to pitch my tent, scramble my
eggs to the stark reality of the fallen forest still
smoldering steps away from my tailgate.

July wildfire 
sipping on Flying Embers
found a place to sleep

Letters for My Lovers

By M.A. Nicholson (From a poetry sprint this past March with Cate Root et al. It’s part of a sequence!)

VIII.

True: I’d never seen a thing so beautiful
as that night, my bare thighs sinking into cool
grass, cool soil, dark night behind the hawthorn
shrub behind you—your face illuminated 
the foreground, centered, sitting butterfly,
a crown of white clovers perched atop the dark
tangle of your hair.

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About the Author: M.A. Nicholson is a New Orleans poet, editor, educator, journalist, and a co-founder of LMNL Arts. M.A. completed her M.F.A. at the University of New Orleans — where she served as Associate Poetry Editor for Bayou Magazine — and was the recipient of the 2021 Andrea-Saunders Gereighty Academy of American Poets Award. She has work featured in Best New Poets 2022, and her debut poetry collection Around the Gate (The Word Works) was selected for the 2024 Hilary Tham Capital Collection. Connect with M.A. at michellenicholsonpoetry.com

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Upcoming Poetry Events

July 22, Induction of Santa Barbara County Youth Poet Laureate, Jasmine Guerrero Sevilla at the Solvang City Council meeting.

July 24, Thousand Oaks Library, poet and artist Anita McLaughlin is reading at 6 p.m. Host Ron Fullerton invites readers to bring in an ekphrastic poem.

August 4, Goleta Valley Library Series features Santa Barbara Poet Laureate Melinda Palacio, Santa Barbara’s new Youth Poet Laureate Jasmine Guerrero Sevilla, Soe Bender and Ruben Lee Dalton, 2 p.m.