Documents (New Poets of America, 42) [Paperback] Gray, Jan-Henry and Powell, D. A.

“As a Filipino-American conscious of his multiple identities and the trove of experiences and external forces that shaped him, Gray uses the unfettered landscape of poetry to release himself and others from the limitations that aggrieve undocumented immigrants.” ―New City Lit

Rooted in the experience of living in America as a queer undocumented Filipino, Documents maps the byzantine journey toward citizenship through legal records and fragmented recollections. In poems that repurpose the forms and procedures central to an immigrant’s experiences―birth certificates, identification cards, letters, and interviews―Jan-Henry Gray reveals the narrative limits of legal documentation while simultaneously embracing the intersections of identity, desire, heritage, love, and a new imagining of freedom.

Jan-Henry Gray was born in Quezon City, Philippines, and moved to California with his family when he was six years old. He lived undocumented in the U.S. for more than 32 years. He received his BA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University and his MFA in Poetry from Columbia College Chicago. He is the recipient of the inaugural Undocupoets Fellowship, the 2014 Jack Kent Cooke Graduate Arts Award, the Juniper Summer Writing Institute Fellowship, and the 2016 Lannan Prize from the Academy of American Poets. His work has appeared in The Rumpus, Poetry Foundation, Poets.org, Tupelo Quarterly, Colorado Review, Fourteen Hills, New City, Puerto del Sol, Southern Humanities Review, Nepantla: An Anthology Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color, and other journals. He lives in Chicago with his husband where he writes and co-hosts events featuring writers, performers, artists, and musicians.

D. A. Powell is the author of five collections of poetry, including Chronic, winner of the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, and Repast: Tea,Lunch, and Cocktails. Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys received the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry. He lives in San Francisco.