Stats & Stanzas at Busboys & Poets

Jan 17

Exited to have been an invited organizer, co-host, and featured poet for “Stats & Stanzas: Poetry for the Public's Health” at Busboys & Poets in Washington, DC, hosted by APHA Press as part of the 2025 Annual Meeting of the American Public Health Association. Dreamed up and made manifest with co-host Dr. Shanaé Burch and co-conspirator Dr. LeConté Dill, building from our collective and individual work at the intersections of public health, poetry, radical resistance, and healing. This work includes our co-founding of the Poetry for the Public’s Health poetry department in Health Promotion Practice — the first-ever and only poetry department in a peer-reviewed public health journal — as well as the annual Stats & Stanzas poetry and public health event in Portland, OR. This DC event was particularly special, not only because it was the first event of its kind ever sponsored and hosted by APHA as an official conference event(!), but also because we had the opportunity to feature and discuss the second edition of “Racism: Science and Tools for the Public Health Professional”, co-edited by Drs. Chandra Ford and Derek Griffith and published by APHA. See here for two chapters co-authored with public health/creative arts poet-scholar co-conspirators Dr. Shanaé Burch and Dr. LeConté Dill.

Thanks to everyone who came out to share the space with us!

Summary video of the event.