Dujie Tahat Is Our 2020 Frontier New Voices Fellow!
We are so pleased to share with you all that poet Dujie Tahat has been chosen as our New Voices Fellow for 2020.
Our New Voices Fellowship is designed to uplift and support emerging poets from traditionally marginalized communities. Last year, Moira J., held the title. Dujie Tahat was selected this year from a wonderful group of submissions by poets of diverse backgrounds.
At 29, Dujie Tahat has accomplished much as an emerging author, with a strong background in performance and spoken word, and holds an intriguing space at the intersection of political community building and poetry making—in his own words:
“As for why I poet: In a lot of ways, the answer is simply because I have to. I entered poetry through Youth Speaks Seattle, so for me, poetry had always been alive, between people, and part of the ephemera of living (at least if one is lucky enough to see it). As a result, my poetry life has always been an act of self-construction and community-building. From 2013-2017, I stopped writing altogether. When I divorced the mother of my three kids, however, it came like a flood. Poetry started chasing me. Simultaneously, I started working in political communications, and began the political project of returning words to their meaning or some kind of meaning that improved the material lives of people like me and my communities. In many ways, I tried to stop writing poetry. But the personal, professional, and public stakes kept rising. The need for a coherent self and community to hold me kept increasing. Along the way, I published my first poem in middle of 2018 and have been wildly fortunate in the generous reception of my work since. I’m in this place now, where who I am is made up of poems I’ve written and read, and the friends I’ve made are parts of communities I owe. There’s no turning back or away from them or myself now.”
Dujie will receive a $500 grant to go towards submission fees, editorial guidance on his work, the opportunity to read for Frontier and join our community, and also publication of their poetry or prose.
Thank you to everyone who applied, and please keep a lookout for our next 2020 New Voices Fellowship submission opportunity, for undocumented poets.
Dujie Tahat is a Filipino-Jordanian immigrant living in Washington state. He is the author of Here I Am O My God, selected by Fady Joudah as a winner of a Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship. Their poems have been published or are forthcoming in POETRY, Sugar House Review, The Journal, Ninth Letter, Hobart, Southeast Review, Narrative, Grist, Bennington Review, Poetry NW, The Shallow Ends, Asian American Literary Review, Cosmonauts Avenue, and elsewhere. Dujie has earned fellowships from Hugo House, Jack Straw, and the Poetry Foundation, as well as a work study scholarship at Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. They serve as a poetry editor for Moss and Homology Lit and cohost The Poet Salon podcast. He got his start as a Seattle Poetry Slam Finalist, a collegiate grand slam champion, and Seattle Youth Speaks Grand Slam Champion, representing Seattle at HBO’s Brave New Voices.
Listen to Dujie’s podcast The Poet Salon, which he cohosts with Luther Hughes and Gabrielle Bates.
Read more of their recent work here.
For inquiries and solicitations, you can email us or reach him here.
