Poets

By encouraging and broadcasting the best and brightest performance poets of today, Button Poetry hopes to broaden poetry’s audience, to expand its reach and develop a greater level of cultural appreciation for the art form.

Francis Dylan Waguespack (he/they) is a painter and Pushcart-nominated poet from New Orleans who writes about the politics of disasters and being from a place and in a body that both live under threat. He is 34, and… MORE

Ayanna Florence is a spoken word poet, author, and creative from Chesapeake, VA. A born writer and performer, she prides herself in creating work that is thought-provoking, emotion-evoking, and fearless. Since her introduction to slam poetry at 16… MORE

Matt Mason served as the Nebraska State Poet from 2019-2024 and has run poetry workshops in Botswana, Romania, Nepal, and Belarus for the U.S. State Department. His poetry has appeared in The New York Times and Matt has received a… MORE

Tim Raymond is an autistic and nonbinary writer based in South Korea. Their fiction has appeared in Conjunctions, Chicago Quarterly Review, Joyland, and Witness, among other publications. They contribute comics to ONLY POEMS regularly and post stories and… MORE

PAGES Matam (They/He), is a genderqueer med school drop-out turned award-winning multi-hyphenate, pleasure advocate and agent of imagination. Their work as a film-poet is fueled by Toni Morrison’s words: “the function of freedom is to free someone else,”… MORE

gigi bella has been ranked the tenth best woman poet in the world (WOWPS 2017), the two time Project X Bronx Poetry Champion and a National Poetry Slam Champion. She currently has 100,000+ views on YouTube with mega… MORE

Buddy Wakefield is an actor, writer, producer, and three-time world champion spoken word artist featured on the BBC, HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, ABC Radio National and has been signed to both Sage Francis’ Strange Famous Records as well… MORE

Ollie Schminkey (they/them) has spent the past decade coaching, mentoring, teaching classes, and running workshops for poets. They were the winner of the 2024-25 Palette Previously Published Poem Prize, and their work has been featured everywhere from Poets.org… MORE

Carson Wolfe is a Mancunian poet 2024 Button Poetry Chapbook Contest Runner-Up  and winner of New Writing North’s Debut Poetry Prize (2023). Their work has appeared with Rattle, The Rumpus, The North, The Common, Best New Poets, and… MORE

Chelsea Guevara is a U.S.-Salvadorian poet from Salt Lake City, Utah. In 2024, she won the Womxn of the World International Poetry Slam, becoming the first Salvadoran and the first Utahn to earn a national individual slam title…. MORE