Contributors
Founder
Salena JD
Born and raised in Brockton, Massachusetts, Salena JD is a poet, pole dancer, & philanthropist who currently calls Providence, Rhode Island home. A creative entrepreneur at heart, she is the founder of The Poetry Pour, a local media company that aims to connect local poets & poetry lovers and make the power of poetry approachable & accessible to all. When she isn’t working on poems of her own or creating content for TPP, she serves as the Development Associate at New Urban Arts (NUA) where she works behind the scenes & a computer screen to support the fundraising efforts that enable NUA to provide free after-school arts & leadership programming to local high school students. As a Black, Queer, Jewish woman, Salena crafts poems that embrace every intersection of her identity, exploring themes of family, addiction, sisterhood, & sex work on the page and the stage. She uses both adopted & invented forms to reveal the complexities of the taboo, challenge cultural norms, & establish autonomy while delving into deeply personal topics with nuance, humor, and honesty. (PC: Jenn Recinos, @yeniii_ on IG)
Featured Poets
Shelley Stoehr
Shelley Stoehr is the author of four award-winning young adult novels from the 1990s and many short works of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. She has received awards from The de Groot Foundation, The North American Review, New Millenium Writings, Writer's Digest, WOW: Women on Writing, The New York Public Library, and the ALA. Shelley's memoir, Girls Girls Girls: One Woman's Experience as a Sex Worker in the 1990s, will be published by Legacy Book Press in September 2026.
Olivia Poulin
Olivia Poulin is an abolitionist educator, writer, and performing artist whose work critically examines power and justice as they pertain to race, gender, sexuality, language, and bodies. She is the Community Partnership & Program Manager at the Anti-Carceral Co+Laboratory. She has featured as a spoken word artist on platforms including GBH and her writing on education has been published in The Boston Globe. Olivia blends storytelling and research to document the wisdom of grassroots organizers working to foster transformative justice and healing within communities impacted by incarceration; her recent projects have focused on abolitionist frameworks for community care and relationship building in liberation work.
