Tresa's Poetry Fellowship at The Watering Hole '23

Hi, my name is Tresa Green I am a black, queer, nonbinary, multidisciplinary artist born and raised in Pittsburgh's Historic Hill District and I have been accepted into The Watering Hole's 2023 Poetry Fellowship Cohort! The funds I am raising will cover food, registration, travel, and room and board.

I began my literary journey in 2017 as a part of the Garden of Peace Project’s Trans Voices, a performance that was a culmination of community writing workshops held by GPP. I then was accepted into Winter Tangerine’s Summer Workshop where I participated in the week-long summer writing workshop held at New York City’s Poets House. In April of 2018, I was given the opportunity to write and perform two commissioned poems for Vanessa German’s exhibit somtimes.we.cannot.be.with.our.bodies. : T H E goodbye ritual held at the Mattress Factory. In 2020, I was contacted by the Black Unicorn Library to join their consultation of the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for African American Poetry and Poetics community-based program specifically for nonacademic black poets, Pittsburgh Poetry Partnership Program. In June of 2020 I published my first poem ‘Dreamscape With Fists of Waves’ Originally published in All Pittsburghers are Poets: Poem of the Week by Sampsonia Way Magazine. Earlier this year I was accepted into Voices Of Our Nation’s Voices Writing Intensive based at The University of Miami and I am so excited to have recently been accepted in The Watering Hole’s 2023 Poetry Fellowship.

This fellowship is important to me because it will help me grow as an artist, give me the space to interrogate my writing, and solidify my writing career plan for the new year. Most of my writing is about love, identity, disruption, and conviction. For me, poetry is deeply personal. It is the place where what's lying under my heart comes to light. As a person who is a deep thinker and analytic, it's hard to get out of my head. it's hard to stand on this talent as a nonacademic writer and trust what I have to bring to the table.

I know this fellowship will help me begin the composition for my first collection, hone my writing regimen, and ground me through nature's omnipresence. To write on the river in the loving arms of black poets for four days is a much-needed morsel of heaven. I plan on listening, growing, communing, and writing the things I need to save myself, and hopefully - god willing - the work I create will help someone else.

I am asking you all to make an investment in my growth as a writer and creative. I am asking you to invest in the African American Literary Cannon by supporting my partaking in this fellowship and ultimately what is required to get me to the next stage of my writing career. Thank you in advance <3