J. Mae Barizo
“It is clear we are in the hands of a highly cultivated, intelligent writer.” - Phillip Lopate
b.
Toronto, ON
Currently
New York City
faculty
The New School
performance
Mark Morris Dance Company, Jay-Z, Pharrell, Kanye West, Beyoncé, Frank Ocean, Hans Zimmer, among others
Born in Toronto to Filipino immigrants, J. Mae Barizo is a poet, essayist and multidisciplinary artist who works at the intersection of poetics, performance and decoloniality. She is the author of two books of poetry, Tender Machines (Tupelo Press, 2023) and The Cumulus Effect (Four Way Books, 2015). Pink Noise, a book of hybrid essays on John Cage and the poetics of sound was a finalist for the Graywolf Nonfiction Prize and the 2023 Megaphone Prize. Her work has been anthologized in books published by W.W. Norton, Atelier Editions and Harvard University Press.
An advocate of cross-disciplinary work, she has collaborated with artists such as Salman Rushdie, Mark Morris and the American String Quartet. As a librettist, she is the inaugural recipient of Opera America's IDEA residency; DRIFT, her opera (written with composer Alyssa Weinberg) on migration and climate change, is in development at the National Opera Center. ISOLA, a feminist monodrama written with composer Alyssa Weinberg, had its world premiere in 2024 with Long Beach Opera. UNBROKEN, an opera written with Ronald Maurice, was commissioned for Opera Theatre of St. Louis’s New Works Collective and will be premiered in 2024.
She is also the recipient of fellowships and awards from Bennington College, Mellon Foundation, Critical Minded, Jerome Foundation and Poets House. In 2024 she will be an artist resident at Baryshnikov Arts Center. Recent writing appears in Poetry, Ploughshares, Esquire, Los Angeles Review of Books, Paris Review Daily, Boston Review, BookForum, among others. She has taught writing and transdisciplinary studies at the Pratt Institute and Parsons School of Design. She is on the MFA faculty of The New School and lives in New York City.
BOOKS
2023
2015
ANTHOLOGIES
2022
John Cage: Art, Life & Zen
Atelier Editions
2021
Four Quartets: Poetry in the Pandemic
Tupelo Press
2018
The Kiss
w.w. Norton & company
2017
Renga for Obama