Transgender Poetics
IN MAJORITY-RURAL SPACES
A Series of Workshops & Writings
Created by Elliot Pecora and funded by SUNY Geneseo's Keith ‘11 and Joanna ‘13 Walters Artist-in-Residence Ambassadorship, "Rural Trans Poetics" is a project which works to create community and foster self-expression for TGNB+ peoples living in majority-rural spaces.
Why majority-rural spaces?
1 in 6
Trans people live in rural areas. This number is the same as that for cisgender & heterosexual people.
54%
of Trans people in the United States live in majority-rural states.
43%
of Trans adults in rural areas have experienced at least one form of anti-Transgender violence or harassment in the past year. Thus, this project focuses on building community and self-expression for Trans people who exist outside of urban spaces.
How does this project work?
Through a number of avenues, including SUNY Geneseo and local writing centers, I create and execute poetry workshops that center the works of Trans writers. These workshops, while open, focus on the Trans experience as told through writing and invoke questions about body, form, and expression that we can then all work to address. This website also contains a forum section, where Trans writers can post and comment on each other's works, which I hope can be a useful tool to avoid feelings of isolation among Trans people in areas which may not have large Queer communities. As an artist in residence, I am also working on my own collection, which will be posted here by the end of 2023.
