"A voice at once expansive and hermetic, Kent Leatham's poems reach ever outward to touch and name . . . His work is democratic, plural, and loving in its close observation of the world"
~ Ron Spalletta, Assistant to the Director, Blacksmith House Poetry Series
Kent Leatham (he/him) is a poet, translator, and public educator. His work has appeared in dozens of literary journals and anthologies, both in the United States and abroad, and he has given and facilitated poetry readings from coast to coast. Kent is a proudly pansexual member of the LGBTQIA+ family, and his ancestral ethnic heritage is Scottish-American.
Kent was born in 1984 as the only child of a single working mother and an anonymous sperm-donor father. He grew up on the Monterey Peninsula in the heart of California's Central Coast (the true land of the Rumsen Ohlone people, who are not dead). A grateful graduate of the K-12 public school system, Kent later received a Bachelor of Arts in Poetry from Pacific Lutheran University (Tacoma, WA) and a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry from Emerson College (Boston, MA). |
Kent served as an associate poetry editor for Black Lawrence Press from 2010-2013, a poetry reviewer for Zoland from 2012-2013, a poetry reader for Redivider from 2006-2007, and as co-chief-editor (with the artist/production designer Jamie Forslund) for Saxifrage from 2004-2006. He was a member of the Woodberry Translation Group from 2010-2012, working alongside poets like Chloe Garcia Roberts (trans. Li Shangyin: Selected Poems) and Laura Healy (trans. Roberto Bolaño: The Unknown University); their collaboration culminated in a feature presentation on the art of literary translation at the 2012 Massachusetts Poetry Festival. His writing mentors have included the poets John Skoyles (Yes and No), Gail Mazur (Land's End), Peter Jay Shippy (A Spell of Songs), Jonathan Aaron (Journey to the Lost City), David Rivard (Standoff), Sarah Hannah (Inflorescence), Rick Barot (The Galleons), Marjorie Rommel (former Poet Laureate of Auburn, WA), Leonore Wilson (Tremendum, Augustum), and Bill Minor (Another Morning).
Kent currently works in the California public school system, and is the Curator for the Monterey Bay Poetry Consortium, a free monthly reading series featuring poets affiliated with California's Central Coast region. He previously taught as an adjunct lecturer for nine years in the School of Humanities and Communication at California State University, Monterey Bay, where he facilitated courses covering such topics as "Poetry and Gender," "Multicultural Poetry," "Introduction to Social Action Writing," "Postcolonial Global Literature," and "Literary Journal Editing/Publishing," as well as coursework in composition, argumentation, critical thinking, and advocacy. He served as the co-founder (with Lucas Bailor) and faculty advisor for In the Ords, the university's student-produced undergraduate literary-arts journal.
In his off-hours, Kent enjoys practical-FX horror films, rock climbing, Sherlockiana, paronomasia, collecting CDs like it's 1999, and dreaming of dinosaurs. He is a trans-inclusive feminist, an amputated intactivist, a tenet-focused Satanist and freethinker, and a believer that BIPOC lives have always mattered and always will. His individually written work is, and will always be, human-made and fundamentally opposed to AI piracy, plagiarism, and wage-theft.
Kent currently works in the California public school system, and is the Curator for the Monterey Bay Poetry Consortium, a free monthly reading series featuring poets affiliated with California's Central Coast region. He previously taught as an adjunct lecturer for nine years in the School of Humanities and Communication at California State University, Monterey Bay, where he facilitated courses covering such topics as "Poetry and Gender," "Multicultural Poetry," "Introduction to Social Action Writing," "Postcolonial Global Literature," and "Literary Journal Editing/Publishing," as well as coursework in composition, argumentation, critical thinking, and advocacy. He served as the co-founder (with Lucas Bailor) and faculty advisor for In the Ords, the university's student-produced undergraduate literary-arts journal.
In his off-hours, Kent enjoys practical-FX horror films, rock climbing, Sherlockiana, paronomasia, collecting CDs like it's 1999, and dreaming of dinosaurs. He is a trans-inclusive feminist, an amputated intactivist, a tenet-focused Satanist and freethinker, and a believer that BIPOC lives have always mattered and always will. His individually written work is, and will always be, human-made and fundamentally opposed to AI piracy, plagiarism, and wage-theft.
All Text & Images Copyright Kent Leatham, 2023 (unless otherwise attributed)