Name: Writers Guild Spoken Word Series
Start: 2026-02-12T18:00:00-05:00
Location: Backspace Gallery

THURSDAY, FEB 12
6pm EST
featuring poets S.J. Ghaus, M.J Arcangelini, B. Harlan Deemer
open mic to follow

Sponsored in part by the Bloomington Arts Commission and the Bloomington Urban Enterprise Association
S.J. GHAUS is a Pakistani American poet, educator, illustrator, and cultural worker for the people. Drawing on years of community organizing in national and local movements for justice, they work across genre to dream into decolonial pasts, presents, and futures. They hold an MFA from Indiana University, where they were awarded the Vera Meyer Strube Academy of American Poets Prize, the Guy Lemmon Award for Public Writing, and the Earl J. S. Ho Award for Teaching of Undergraduate Creative Writing. Most recently, their writing has received support from Tin House and VONA/Voices of Our Nation. You can find their work in print and online in numerous literary magazines, radio programs, and galleries, and they teach at organizations, institutions, and collectives across the country. S.J. also organizes and facilitates the biweekly online poetry and organizing series in solidarity with Palestine, In Water & Light (@inwaterandlight on IG). They believe in freedom for all colonized people, from every river to every sea.
M.J. (Michael Joseph) ARCANGELINI was born 1952 in western Pennsylvania. He has resided in northern California since 1979. His work has been published in many magazines, online journals, and over a dozen anthologies. He is the author of 8 published collections, the most recent of which are the full-length PAWNING MY SINS (Luchador Press, 2022) and the chapbooks FIERCE KISSES (Rebels & Squares Press, 2024) and HOOKING UP (Pure Sleaze Press, 2025). He has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
B. HARLAN DEEMER is an old, privileged WASP. He schooled in Virginia and Sweden, lived in Stockholm 13 years, 30 in Chicago, and has semi-retired to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan near the Straits of Mackinac, where he watches Lake Huron and its animals come and go. To his knowledge, and tastes, the best poem he has ever read is Francisco de Quevedo's Amor mas constante ahi de la muerte. Deemer is the author of two collections of poems: HAVING WORDS TOGETHER (1999) and COURTING REJECTION (2021).