Capturing Fire is a celebration of international trans & queer spoken word poets led by Artist Director and the "Fairy Godmother of Spoken Word," Regie Cabico. Every year these poets gather to support each other, encourages allyship, risk-taking, and artistic growth through a series of rousing workshops and performances. For the first time, the diverse fiery voices of these poets have been collected on these pages. These are potent poems of love, loss, humor, anger, identity, struggling to find one's path and live one's truth. These words are stoked and ready to explode. Are you ready to feel the fire?

Super Stoked: An Anthology of Queer Poetry from the Capturing Fire Slam & Summit

Literature & Fiction

Cabico, Regie

Poetry

Capturing Fire Press

"Infinity Standing Up" tells the messy, rowdy, off-again/on-again story of a passionate love affair in the form of 40 generally Shakespearean sonnets, each one a square box of 14 lines, 10 beats to a line, rhyming true to the form: abab, cdcd, efef, gg. Each one is a meticulously crafted dog-crate for the untrained puppy of love.Of course these are not the first sonnets to attempt the task of wrestling a doggish passion into order. Poet Drew Pisarra joins a long line of lovers who have used the sonnet form to rebuild walls and repair roofs after a hurricane of love and loss. These sonnets are Shakespearean, in form and also spirit, in their celebration of the lustful male body, in their evocation of a dark young rival, in their hope and wonder and ultimately bitter betrayal and loss.“These poems navigate the rapids of desire in a form that wa made for twists and turns of feeling, from the derangement of lust to rueful self-reflection. Drew Pisarra honors the Shakespearean sonnet’s tradition of wit and economy, while simultaneously delivering the pleasurable shock of 2st-century idiom.” Joan Larkin, author of "Cold River" (Lambda Literary Award)

Infinity Standing Up

Pisarra, Drew

Jae Escoto is a Filipino trans man who has performed spoken word poetry and competed in poetry slam competitions since 2006. Jae holds a bachelor's degree from California State University San Marcos, double-majoring in Literature and Writing and Women's Studies, and minoring in Philosophy. Jae also holds a master's degree in Women's Studies from San Diego State University. The voices in this book are representative of the author and the woman who lives inside of him (narrated in italics) as they journey through their transition from woman to man."The Woman Inside Of Me" is Jae Escoto's daring narrative to take us into the struggles of becoming our fiercest selves. Everything that I have witnessed in Escoto's spoken word work on stage is in this collection, an epic slam poem with an insightful self-probing that moves the reader to haunting depths and breathtaking heights. Here is a literary work that enfolds with layers of poetic passages and dialogue that are sharp as truth, a truly Filipinx work that explodes the foundation of genders and what it means to love and its fragility. A stunning piece of art from beginning to end, intense and full of glorious epiphanies." -Regie Cabico, Poet & Publisher Capturing Fire Press "In this multigenre work, Jae Escoto chronicles the year he comes out as a trans man and prepares himself for hormone treatments. The dual and dueling voices in The Woman Inside of Me speak with uncertainty, fear, anger, pain, determination, compassion, and love. Escoto's language, tonal shifts, and multiple genres evoke an immediacy that positions the reader as witness unable and unwilling to look away from his wonderfully terrible struggle to be 'unapologetically' he/him." --- Catherine Cucinella, Ph.D., Assistant Professor (retired) California State University San Marcos; author, Poetics of the Body: Edna St. Vincent Millay, Elizabeth Bishop, Marilyn Chin, and Marilyn Hacker (Palgrave). "In his electrifying debut book, Jae Escoto plunges the reader deep into the personal dialogue underlying his journey to live as his fullest self. He makes it impossible for us to see our world as separate from his story, or from the many complicated stories that follow us every day. Escoto's genius is his emotional accuracy. He pens a stunningly authentic voyage all his own. In this, he empowers all of us to breathe more of our own air into our own lives, regardless of what already sits inside of us." -- Matt Storm, transgender artist and curator, leadership team member of the LGBTQ Caucus of the Society for Photographic Education, inaugural fellow of STABLE Arts

The Woman Inside of Me

Escoto, Jae

The collected poetry of Micah Powell

Things No One Else Wants to Say

the Poet, Micah

"Drew Pisarra's extraordinary sonnets provoke and involve the reader's response to the poet's personal experiences, energized scenarios of love, sex and irony!" — Rochelle Owens, Salt & Core\n"Periodic Boyfriends is what you get when you pair Grindr problems with the human need to rationalize existence: carefully wrought stanzas filled with wit, humor, loss, and longing." — Patrick Key, Grand Little Things\n"Each of these powerful, provocative, sexy sonnets is a play unto itself with two characters wrestling – coming together, falling away, then perhaps back again. Pisarra is a lover in every sense. His passion and respect for the struggle is stunningly expressed in this hilarious and dazzling book." — Linda Manning, Perfect Love\n"Drew Pisarra’s brilliant new collection reminds a reader of what those randy geniuses, the Elizabethan and 17th-century sonneteers, knew well: it’s an elegant whore of a form, bending graciously to the whims and passions of a canny writer. Pisarra is one of those. A rare one." — Clarinda Harriss, Dirty Blue Voice

Periodic Boyfriends