upcoming grant deadline: 05/15/2024
A poet and immigrant from Indonesia, Cynthia Dewi Oka interrogates the way power operates in intimate and public life at the intersections of race, gender, class and nation, with specific attention to constructions of body, memory, and violence. She is the author of two books of poems: Salvage: Poems (Northwestern University Press, 2017) and Nomad of Salt and Hard Water (Thread Makes Blanket, 2016). Her poetics is informed by her work as an organizer with immigrants and communities of color, and her organizing extends from the empathetic and transformative capacities of poetry, where through language, disappeared and disparate worlds can co-exist. Recently, she created Sanctuary: A Migrant Poetry Workshop for immigrant poets in Philadelphia in partnership with Asian Arts Initiative with the support of a 2016 Leeway Foundation Art and Change Grant. She is the proud mom of a young musician, a Community Organizer with the New Sanctuary Movement of Philadelphia, and has served as a Poetry Mentor for The Blueshift Journal's Speakeasy Project, an online workshop series for emerging poets from marginalized communities. A three-time Pushcart Prize Nominee, she has received the Fifth Wednesday Journal Editor's Prize in Poetry, and scholarships from Voices of Our Nations and the Vermont Studio Center.