The Shape of What Remains: The Holy Ghost Still Laughs

Across their work, these poets sit with what lingers: grief that does not loosen its grip, memory that returns uninvited, and love that reshapes us long after it leaves. Their poems move through the body as archive, through language as a site of both fracture and repair, asking what it means to carry what we’ve inherited—and what it means to be carried by it in return.
At the center of the evening is the debut of The Holy Ghost Lives In Her Laugh, Phelps's latest collection that traces the sacred echoes of family, faith, and loss. Here, laughter becomes more than joy—it becomes presence, a way of naming what remains when absence refuses to be silent. Together, these voices create a space that is both tender and unflinching—where silence is honored, memory is given breath, and reading becomes an act of witnessing.

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Dr. Darius Phelps is the author of My God’s Been Silent (Writ Large Press, 2026) and The Holy Ghost Lives In Her Laugh (Kith Books, 2026). A poet before anything else, his work bears witness to grief, faith, and the act of becoming—offering language as a form of liberation and light. Through the lens of poetic inquiry, Dr. Phelps explores how verse can function as pedagogy, healing and survival. Rooted in Black literary traditions and personal testimony, his work has been featured or is forthcoming in Frozen Sea, Diode,Tupelo Quarterly, Matter Monthly, Een Magazine, School Library Journal, and many more.

Andrew Chi Keong Yim was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi. His debut poetry collection, The Ninth Island, is forthcoming from University of Pittsburgh Press in Spring 2027. Andrew was awarded the 2024 New Voices Award in Poetry from Washington Square Review, selected by Terrance Hayes, and is a 2025 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship finalist. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Best New Poets, The Adroit Journal, Outskirts Literary Journal, Shō Poetry Journal, The Hopkins Review, and other publications. Andrew has taught with the Wisconsin Pr*son Humanities Project and at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he was the Martha Meir Renk Distinguished Graduate Fellow in poetry and received the August Derleth Prize for fiction. He lives in Queens and is a public school teacher in New York City.

Kyle Carrero Lopez is the author of MUSCLE MEMORY, the chapbook winner of the 2020 [PANK] Books Contest, PARTY LINE, forthcoming July 2026 from Graywolf, and serves as Editor for the Poetry Project Newsletter. Born to Cuban parents in northern New Jersey, his work centers power, social life, and Afro-Cuban histories, among other subjects. He’s represented by—but not related to—Ashley Lopez at Massie McQuilkin & Altman. He co-founded LEGACY, a Brooklyn-based production collective by and for Black queer artists. His writing has been highlighted in Best New Poets and Best of the Net; round-ups in W Magazine, Current Affairs, and The Atlantic; and episodes of Poetry Unbound and The Slowdown. Kyle has received fellowships from Cave Canem, CubaOne Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts, the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, NYC Poets Afloat, and NYU, where he was a Goldwater Writing Workshop Fellow, a Provost’s Global Research Initiative Fellow at NYU Berlin, and earned his M.F.A. in Poetry. He was also a 2022 Tin House Scholar.

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