Wear a Clean Second Face (Poetry), New Haven, CT
Wear a Clean Second Face is a project focused on the paradoxes of American football: owners, profit, and spectacle; brutality, cognition, & desire; masculinity, vulnerability, embodiment; blackness, tenderness, intimacy, and flesh.
“I hope this project will be a small reminder, even to myself, that our lives are worth living and worth fighting for.”
Joshua Aiken is a poet and black studies scholar. A Cave Canem fellow, Vermont Studio Center resident, and recipient of the Martin Starkie Prize, his creative work has appeared or is forthcoming in Apogee Journal, Assaracus, Boulevard, Copper Nickel, Forklift, Ohio, Indianapolis Review, Muzzle, Nepantla, Pleiades, and Sixth Finch. A J.D./Ph.D. Candidate at Yale in History and African-American Studies, he is the former Researcher-in-Residence at Artspace New Haven and co-convenor of the Racial Capitalism and Carceral State Working Group. Joshua has received scholarships from the Point Foundation and Rhodes Trust, holds graduate degrees from Oxford in History and Forced Migration Studies, and is the former Policy Fellow at the Prison Policy Initiative where his research focused on mass criminalization.
Visit Joshua’s website, at joshua-aiken.com;
Find Joshua on Twitter: @jaikes101
Instagram: @jaikes101