Open Mic Friday! featuring Niki Escobar

Welcome, wonderful readers, to Open Mic Friday! Every week we have a featured “reading” in the body of this post. Applause and other feedback go in the comments, where you’re also welcome to share your own work. The comments are threaded, so you can reply directly to each reader by hitting the “reply” button within that comment box.

Read, share, and converse!

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Today I am happy to introduce Niki Escobar, a friend from VONA and a prolific (and multi-talented) poet and artist. Here she shares a page from her journal.

Tall Monster by Niki Escobar

This drawing and poem, entitled “Tall Monster”, is an example of my diarist work. I keep a journal where I sketch images, lines, and short poems to help form larger pieces. My visual works vary greatly. They range from urban surrealism to extra big, abstract paintings of pregnant womyn or Philippine deities made out of newspaper and leaves. “Tall Monster” was inspired by something one of my autistic clients said one day while we were drawing outside: “I am lonely all the time. It is scary. But sometimes, I like it.”

Please feel free to contact me or follow my poems-in-progress and photography on my blog: http://bookandbolo.tumblr.com

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Niki Escobar earned her BA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. She is the recipient of the Frances Jaffer Poetry Prize, and her first collection of work, Loved Letters, was a Finalist in the Meritage Press 2009-2010 Filamore Tabios Manuscript Contest. She is a Voices of Our Nations (VONA) Arts Foundation Fellow. Her paintings, drawings, and other visual works incorporate the poetry of other writers of color, as well as her own. Her poems and other writings are published in literary journals and anthologies including Walang Hiya, Rust & Moth, Red Wheelbarrow, Mythium, The Womanist, The Walrus, and Maganda Magazine. She is the author of Your Native Tongue in My Ear, a manuscript of prose and poetry that explores how our history shapes our sensuality and sexual struggles. Niki will be teaching an all-day social justice poetry workshop for the GET UP! STAND UP FOR HUMAN RIGHTS! PROJECT organized by the Habi Arts Collective in Los Angeles on November 20th, 2010.

Thank you, Niki! And now — it’s your turn. Comments are open!