Join us on Sunday April 14th, 4-5pm, at the HUUB, 35 Cleveland Street, Orange NJ 07050. Kathy Kremins and Ysabel Y. González will give our April FAITH+WORKS service.
In a free-ranging conversation interspersed with poems that speak to the topics of spirituality, creativity, love, community, and activism, Ysabel Y. González and Kathy Kremins reflect on what it means to be a poet in community in this time and place. For Ysi and Kat, love is at the root of everything. Creating can be considered a solitary action, but in sharing and reflecting, we are participating in an act of lovingkindness in community, deeply engaging in vulnerability. From this emerges the speaking truth to power through faith. As feminists who live with unseen disabilities, practicing daily joy and gratitude in community is essential to sustaining ourselves. Sharing our poems with others is our leap of faith.
Newark, NJ native Ysabel Y. González, received her BA from Rutgers University, an MFA in Poetry from Drew University and works as the Poetry Creative Officer at the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation. Ysabel has received invitations to attend VONA, Tin House, CantoMundo and BOAAT Press workshops. In her work, Ysabel grapples with her neurodivergence and Borinquen roots, and explores how to engage with tenderness in a complicated world. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and the author of Wild Invocations (Get Fresh Books, 2019). You can find her in Jersey living with her husband and two furbabies, crafting, tending to her garden, and reading tarot. Visit www.ysabelgonzalez.com for more.
Kathy Kremins (she/her) is a queer Newark, NJ native of Irish-Catholic immigrant parents. She is a retired public school teacher, adjunct professor, and coach. She has two chapbooks of poems, Seamus & His Smalls (Two Key Customs, June 2023) and Undressing the World (Finishing Line Press, 2022). Her first full-length book of poetry, The Curve of Things, will be published by CavanKerry Press in May 2024. Kathy is an editor of NJ Audubon Magazine and a member of the feminist collective Write On! Poetry Babes. Daily, she leads a band of merry creatures: human children, Arlo and Felix, and not-so-human chimixes, Elvis and Daphne. Feel free to make contact in a variety of ways:
Instagram: @kreminsk
FB: @Kathy Kremins
Website: www.kathykremins.com