Experimental Poetry and Collaboration at Tombolo Books

Join us in the courtyard for a National Poetry Month Celebration in partnership with the City of Writers Poetry Festival & St. Pete Poet Laureate Gloria Muñoz!

Local poets and artists Camilo Loaiza Bonilla, Keifer Calkins, Eleanor Eichenbaum, Tyler Gillespie, and Tenea D. Johnson will be leading collaborative poetry activites that will encourage attendees to create and explore poetry through different mediums.

Camilo Loaiza Bonilla (he/him) is a Latine writer working to unwind generational silence as a queer, trans, first-generation immigrant. He is pursuing his MFA at the University of South Florida, where he explores the intersection of poetry & visual art. His work is in Florida Humanities, Los Angeles Review, So to Speak, and more. In Fall 2025, he will have a solo museum exhibition ("Raíces/Roots"), curated by Dr. Lesley Wolff, at the University of Tampa's Scarfone/Hartley Gallery.

Keifer Calkins is an artist, designer, and poet living in St Petersburg. His work deals with abstract realism and material based experimentation. Most of his work is not for sale.

Eleanor Eichenbaum is an artist and educator based in St. Petersburg, FL.

Tyler Gillespie is the author of the nonfiction collection The Thing about Florida: Exploring a Misunderstood State (University Press of Florida, 2021) and two poetry collections — the nature machine! (Autofocus, 2023) and Florida Man: Poems, Revisited (Burrow Press, 2024).

Tenea D. Johnson is a multimedia storyteller, mentor, musician, editor, poet, and award-winning author of speculative fiction, including Incandescence, a sci fi/dance film collaboration, Frequencies, a Fiction Album and Broken Fevers, of which Publisher’s Weekly wrote “the hard- hitting, memorable short stories in this powerhouse collection … are astounding in their originality.” Smoketown, her debut novel, won the Parallax Award while R/evolution earned an honorable mention that year. She's performed at venues including the Public Theater. Her latest piece, It Is Yours, will be released over the course of 2025. Follow what’s next at teneadjohnson.com.

Host or Publisher Tombolo Books