CHRYSANTHEMUM is a poet, performance artist & public historian. 

She serves as Co-Director of the Providence Poetry Slam.

Photo: Allie + Jesse

Photo: Zach Oren

Chrysanthemum is a poet, performance artist, and public historian. She serves as Co-Director of the Providence Poetry Slam, one of the oldest slam venues in the US. She is the recipient of a 2023 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, a Kundiman Fellow, and a Lambda Literary 2023 Justin Chin Memorial Scholarship Fellow. In 2024, she was named the inaugural Poet-in-Residence for LGBTQ Writers in Schools’ first-ever LGBTQ+ Youth Poet Laureate Residency.

She broke ground as a finalist in the 2016 Women of the World Poetry Slam, and her teams were champions of the Rustbelt Poetry Slam and the first FEM Slam. With Justice Ameer, she served as Artist-in-Residence at Williams College and staged the interdisciplinary show ANTHEM at the American Repertory Theater's OBERON. Through the support of a MacColl Johnson Fellowship from the Rhode Island Foundation, Chrysanthemum organized the Vanishing Point Writing Retreat to connect diasporic Asian poets through collaborative, peer-led instruction, modeled after Rachel McKibbens’ Pink Door Writing Retreat.

Now calling Providence home, she was born to Vietnamese parents in Oklahoma City, where she came of age around the NW 39th Street gayborhood and Asian American enclave. Chrysanthemum is developing her debut collection of poems. Her writing appears in The Nation, ThemThe Offing, The Rumpus, Button Poetry, among others.


Chrysanthemum is represented by Tyler Tsay at The Speakeasy Project for booking inquiries.

“Alias”

Read a new poem from Chrysanthemum featured in March 2024 for Split This Rock's Poem of the Week series. “Alias” is anthologized in We the Gathered Heat: Asian American and Pacific Islander Poetry, Performance, and Spoken Word (Haymarket Books, 2024).

                    I make no pledge

     to do no harm. Above all, a diagnosis is billable.
      Naming wheels an economy so certain I yearn
        for recognition. I would rather not be referred

                  to at all.

“Biological Woman”

For National Poetry Month 2024, The Rumpus has published a poem penned after Maya Angelou. Chrysanthemum performed an earlier version “Biological Woman” on finals stage at the Women of the World Poetry Slam in 2018.

                    Crossing a street,
                                          I conceive of constellations
                               as women
                    who lived once,
          who reach us now,
                    who lit ways forth
                               so we make it home safe—

“I Don’t Even Like Sports”

For Ours Poetica, a collaboration between curators Charlotte Abotsi & Sarah Kay, Complexly and The Poetry Foundation, Chrysanthemum debuts a new poem that takes aim at coordinated legislative efforts to limit trans livelihoods.

A new version of “I Don’t Even Like Sports” is anthologized in Emerge: The Anthology for the 2023 Lambda Literary Writers Retreat (2024).

ReorientingReads.com

Uncanceled, unghosted, and still here. Join us for a virtual reading in celebration of Asian diasporic trans, non-binary, and gender-expansive writers as we gather to launch and fundraise for ReorientingReads.com, a new campaign and community resource for lovers and learners of our stories. This event, organized in the wake of the cancellation of the 2023 Asian American Literary Festival, will be held virtually on Zoom. Saturday, November 11th, 2023 at 3 pm PT / 6 pm ET. As grief and violence persist, we gather collectively to defy all attempts to censor our livelihoods.

ANTHEM by Justice Ameer and Chrysanthemum Tran at the American Repertory Theater's OBERON

ANTHEM

With poet & long-time collaborator Justice Ameer, she staged ANTHEM at the American Repertory Theater's OBERON, weaving poetry, music, song & media arts into a lyrical performance exploring the lasting legacies of historical vanguards on the contours of race, sex & gender. "Moments of rare joy and celebrations of survival are part of the premise," wrote WBUR of the debut show.

Vanishing Point Writing Retreat

Through a MacColl Johnson Fellowship from the Rhode Island Foundation, Chrysanthemum organized the Vanishing Point Writing Retreat to connect Asian poets, writers & artists in diaspora through collaborative, peer-led instruction. This was modeled after Rachel McKibbens’ Pink Door Writing Retreat.

Photos: Tarik Bartel

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