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.

Porsha Olayiwola is a writer, performer, educator and curator who uses afro-futurism and surrealism to examine historical and current issues in the Black, woman, and queer diasporas. She is an Individual World Poetry Slam Champion and is the… MORE

Brenna Twohy is a storyteller and an advocate from Portland, Oregon. Her poetry has been showcased on The Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, Mic, and her mother’s living room table. After representing Portland at the 2013, 2014, and 2016 National… MORE

Rachel “Raych” Jackson is a writer, educator and performer. While teaching in Chicago Public Schools for five years, she competed on numerous national poetry teams and individual competitions. She is the 2017 NUPIC Champion and a 2017 Pink Door… MORE

Michael Lee Vikre is a Norwegian-American writer, educator, abolitionist and anarchist. Author of The Only Worlds We Know (Button Poetry, 2019), he has received grants and scholarships from the Minnesota State Arts Board, the LOFT Literary Center, and… MORE

Dave Harris is a poet and playwright from West Philly. He graduated from Yale University with a B.A. in Theater Studies in 2016 and is a candidate for the MFA in Playwriting at UC San Diego. He has… MORE

Desireé Dallagiacomo (she/her) is a writer, educator, and space creator. She is Chahta and is an enrolled citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, and she has ranked in the top 3… MORE

Shane Hawley is a writer and performer from Saint Paul, Minnesota. A fixture in the spoken word poetry scene since 2001, and a 2010 National Poetry Slam Champion, he has spent the past decade focused mostly on humor… MORE

Phil Kaye’s work has been featured in settings ranging from NPR to the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. He has performed his work in eighteen counties, and was invited to open for His Holiness The… MORE

Claire Schwartz’s poetry has appeared in Apogee, Beloit Poetry Journal, The Massachusetts Review, and Prairie Schooner, and her essays, reviews, and interviews in The Iowa Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. She is… MORE

Stevie Edwards holds a PhD in creative writing from University of North Texas and an MFA in poetry from Cornell University. Stevie’s poems have appeared in Poetry Magazine, American Poetry Review, TriQuarterly, and elsewhere. She is a Lecturer… MORE