Episode 03- Imogen Arate
On today's episode I got to sit down with executive producer and host of Poets and Muses, Imogen Arate. Imogen and I dove into a marriage of topics, all circulating around the idea of trust and building spaces for those communities and experiences that are not inherently our own. We also spoke about types of gate keeping within the poetry world and how it kind of transfers over into the world of activism and platform building.
Imogen Arate is an award-winning Asian-American poet and writer and the Executive Producer and Host of Poets and Muses, an award-winning weekly poetry podcast, where Imogen chats with poets about their inspirations. She has written in four languages and published in two. Her work has been published most recently in New Verse News, ChArt and Writing In A Woman's Voice.
I wrote my first poem as a tween, when a painting I saw inspired me to write down my reactions to it. I grew up in New York, and that made me realize how different people can be and still manage to live along side of each other, while building a thriving metropolis. At the same time, it also showed me our tendency to self-segregate and live insular lives that doesn’t take advantage of all that a multicultural society has to offer. I think both of these aspects give my writing a feeling of looking in but not belonging and the opportunity to incorporate multicultural elements, such as Latin-American musical instruments or Yiddish words, that I’d been exposed to as a long-term resident of NYC.
Website: https://poetsandmuses.com/#ImogenArate
Twitter: @ImogenArate and @PoetsandMuses
Instagram: @imogenarate and @poetsandmuses
