Meet Me Where the Water Runs into Itself Once Again, by Ashley-Devon

Poetry, chapbook, 48 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

Calling all emo kids! Meet Me Where the Water Runs into Itself Once Again: A Poetic Memoir in III Albums is an experiment in poetic memoir that pulses at the intersections of childhood wonder, teen angst, and mature reflection. The collection consists of 36 poems, all of which are crafted as erasures of songs from the first three studio albums released by the emo/post-hardcore band, My Chemical Romance. Each section of the book represents one album and is preceded by an album cover. The three album covers within the collection are original analog/digital collages also crafted by the author. Combined, the album covers and tracks immerse the reader in a whimsical assortment of settings and perspectives, including geographical landscapes and the narrator’s own consciousness.

Explicitly invited to follow along by the speaker, the reader embarks on a magical voyage across time and space to observe a child learn about their assigned social statuses and their implications, a teen be persecuted for their deviation from familial and societal expectations, and an adult experience betrayal and continued identity crisis amid the pursuit of happiness. An artistic documentation of the author’s struggle to simultaneously heed ancestral wisdom and locate the self as a Black, queer, and culturally alternative individual in an oppressive world that demands conformity, the collection is an homage to the historic and the modern, the traditional and the alternative. It is designed to resonate with those who hold marginalized identities, those loyal to the alternative music scene of the early 2000s, and anyone seeking unique modes of poetic storytelling.

Ashley-Devon is a multimodal storyteller who uses poetry and collage to communicate human-centered narratives that spread beyond the bounds of traditional social research. They hold an MA insociocultural anthropology from the University of Cincinnati and an MFA in poetry from the Writer’s Foundry. An ever-wandering child of the African diaspora, they are most at home in the cities of Atlanta, GA and Cincinnati, OH and currently reside in Brooklyn, NY. You may find their poems, collages, and artist interviews in Milk Press, The Rumpus, The African American Review, and beyond. You may review their broader artistic praxis at www.thestorytellerad.com