Kyle “Guante” Tran Myhre

Kyle Tran Myhre (aka Guante) is a poet and activist whose work explores the relationships between narrative, power, and resistance. He’s performed at the United Nations, contributed to a Grammy-winning album, been a member of two National Poetry Slam championship teams, and visited countless colleges, conferences, and festivals, using spoken word and storytelling as doorways into critical dialogue. His most recent book, Not a Lot of Reasons to Sing, But Enough, is available now via Button Poetry.

Whether writing about men’s roles in ending gender-based violence, challenging dominant narratives related to race and racism, or just telling stories about the different jobs he’s had, Tran Myhre strives to cultivate a deeper engagement with social justice issues, one based in both empathy and agency. An educator as well as a performing artist, Tran Myhre completed his Masters studies at the University of Minnesota with a focus on spoken word, critical pedagogy, and social justice education, and regularly facilitates workshops and residencies. He lives in Minneapolis.

NOT A LOT OF REASONS TO SING, BUT ENOUGH

Kyle Tran Myhre’s NOT A LOT OF REASONS TO SING, BUT ENOUGH is a sci-fi-flavored exploration of the role that art and artists play in resisting authoritarianism.

Featuring new poems, theater elements, and Casper Pham‘s stunning visual art, the book follows two wandering poets as they make their way from village to village, across a prison colony moon full of exiled rebels, robots, and storytellers.

Part post-apocalyptic road journal, part alternate universe ode to Hip Hop, and part “Letters to a Young Poet”-style toolkit for emerging poets and aspiring movement-builders, it’s also a one-of-a-kind practitioners’ take on poetry, power, and possibility.

Praise for Kyle Tran Myhre

This collection is a clear, fantastical, urgent excavation of the self and the crumbling pillars of the structures that surround us. Wondrous language underscores an unforgettable voyage across creative formats, circling the phenomenons that artists are and can be capable of.
— Blythe Baird, author of If My Body Could Speak

Guante rattles, resists, and reimagines the reach and convention of the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. How we continue to write our hopes, our fears, and our image into every world we build—at times giving new names to oppressive systems we meant to free ourselves from. Not A Lot of Reasons to Sing, but Enough reminds us, especially the artist, that there is no meaningful world-ending without world-building. That our freedom from cycles of violence may exist in the principles of the cypher, the surprise of the arcane, or in the ancient technologies of the classroom, but always at the mouth of our collective brilliance.
— Joseph Capehart, poet & educator

I have never read a book more slowly because every word seems to demand its own moment. Tran Myhre gives us a chance to excavate a lovingly realized bygone world of heroes, thinkers, and poets struggling with the nature of art, justice, and humanity. Pham’s images gorgeously fill in the emotional spaces outlined by the words. In these pages you will find artists and rebels and troublemakers, and they will break your heart wide open.
— Trung Le Nguyen, artist and author of The Magic Fish

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