Emerging BIWOC Poet Spotlight: Nadia Alexis
This monthly series features poems by women of color in the early stages of their publishing careers. It is our intention to create more space at Perugia for the work of poets who are Black, Indigenous, and women of color (BIWOC). We hope using our platform to highlight this work will expand the readership of the poets we spotlight. This series aligns with Perugia’s mission to celebrate and support emerging women poets, inclusive of gender-expansive identities; featured poems will be from poets with no more than one published full-length collection. We’d love to hear from readers with suggestions for poems & poets to feature.
March 2025 Poet: Nadia Alexis
Photographing Your Mother
She’s in a blue sequin gown, blood-red heels & headwrap colored kaleidoscope. She is birthsong, her own city, generous mountain. When you press the shutter your eyes are no longer yours. You are ocean & every speckle in you weeps. Each selfless gesture of her is on display. You press the shutter, only gift you know how to give. It doesn’t matter that everything tried to get in the way. Here she sits with bells for eyes, her cheekbones & life lines rise, adorned sanctuaries. This time—one of a few when you’ve not failed as her daughter. Smeared, forgotten sins. Both your feathers new.
Source
Beyond the Watershed, CavanKerry Press, 2025
Poet Bio
Nadia Alexis is a poet, writer, and photographer born and raised in Harlem, New York City to Haitian immigrants, and she currently resides in Mississippi. She is the author of a debut full-length collection of poetry and photography, Beyond the Watershed (CavanKerry Press, 2025), which was also a finalist for the 2022 Ghost Peach Press Prize.
Her writing and photography have been published widely, and she has received several awards and honors including a 2025 Literary Arts Fellowship and a 2024 Artist Mini-Grant from the Mississippi Arts Commission, a 2024 Mississippi STAR Teacher Award, a 2024 Vance Fellowship from the Natchez Literary and Cinema Celebration, the 2023 Poet of the Year Honoree of the Haitian Creatives Digital Awards, a semifinalist position in the 2020 92Y Discovery Poetry Contest, a nomination for the 2020 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters photography award, and an honorable mention prize in the 2019 Hurston/Wright College Writers Award for poetry.
Nadia’s photography has been exhibited in several shows in the U.S., Cuba, and virtually. A fellow of the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, The Watering Hole, and the Poets & Writers Get the Word Out Publicity Incubator, she holds a PhD and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Mississippi. She currently resides in Mississippi, where she teaches creative writing to youth and adult writers.