Poetry Consultations with Arisa White -

Arisa White is a Cave Canem fellow, Sarah Lawrence College alumna, an MFA graduate from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and author of the poetry chapbooks Disposition for Shininess, Post Pardon, Black Pearl, Perfect on Accident, and “Fish Walking” & Other Bedtime Stories for My Wife, which won the inaugural Per Diem Poetry Prize.

Published by Virtual Artists Collective, her debut full-length collection, Hurrah’s Nest, was a finalist for the 2013 Wheatley Book Awards and 82nd California Book Awards and was nominated for the 44th NAACP Image Awards. Her second collection, A Penny Saved, inspired by the true-life story of Polly Mitchell, was published by Willow Books, an imprint of Aquarius Press, in 2012. You’re the Most Beautiful Thing That Happened, published by Augury Books, was nominated for the 29th Lambda Literary Awards.

Her current publications include the poetic memoir Who’s Your Daddy and the anthology Home is Where You Queer Your Heart, co-edited with Miah Jeffra and Monique Mero, published by Foglifter Press. Forthcoming from Airlie Press in March 2027 is her fifth full-length poetry collection, A Trusted Spectacle in a World of Incomplete Sunshine.

Arisa is an associate professor of English and Creative Writing at Colby College, a member of the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance’s community advisory board, and a certified Kundalini Yoga instructor.

Arisa will provide detailed comments on your manuscript as well as a cover letter. After receiving these files, participants who submit chapbooks and full-length manuscripts may also book phone/video conferences with them at no additional charge.

Arisa is accepting single poems, folios, chapbooks, and full-length collections for critique. The fees and parameters for each of these categories are as follows:

Single poems up to 2 pages in length, $25
Folios of up to 5 poems, up to 7 pages in length $55
Chapbooks, up to 40 pages in length, $275
Full-length manuscripts, up to 80 pages in length, $425

All manuscripts should be formatted in 12-point font. The deadline to submit work for this consultation program is October 31. Arisa will complete her work and respond to all participants by November 30.

Poetry Consultations with Arisa White

Click Here to Submit Deadline: October 31 How to submit ›

Statement of Purpose

My approach to poetry manuscript consultations is grounded in critical affirmation—a humanizing process of critique that honors your unique vision while guiding you toward self-direction and rigorous artistic growth. I view poetry as an embodied practice where emotional, intellectual, and somatic intelligence converge to create deep, authentic meaning. As a reader and consultant, my role is to act as a centrifuge: separating materials within your work to locate, identify, and elevate the core energy across your collection.

Through an intentional practice of “agitation,” I invite you to examine your draft from unexpected angles to help your poems reveal their essential truths. My evaluation offers both micro-level craft feedback and macro-level structural analysis. Together, we will interrogate:

-Voice and Perspective: How your poems gearshift angles of vision, register, and persona to deepen emotional resonance and engage contemporary prosody.
-Form and Architecture: How stanza arrangements and poetic forms act as generative containers that hold, constrain, or liberate your content.
-The Unspoken and Inhabited Silences: Identifying unexamined taboos, tensions, and silences, using targeted questions to draw hidden truths into language.
-Discernment and Revision: Approaching revision as an act of “re-seeing”—discerning what serves the collection’s overarching arc and what must be released.

Using a maieutic, question-driven approach, our one-on-one feedback session will model how to navigate creative blocks, focus your intent, and ground your writing in sensory precision. You will receive actionable insights and engaging dialogue designed to deepen your craft, clarify your manuscript’s broader body of knowledge, and shift readers into new states of knowing.

Arisa White

Arisa White is an associate professor of English and Creative Writing at Colby College. Most recently, she is the author of Who’s Your Daddy, co-editor of Home Is Where You Queer Your Heart, and co-author of Biddy Mason Speaks Up, the second book in the Fighting for Justice Series for young readers. Her poetry is widely published and her collections have been nominated for an NAACP Image Award, Lambda Literary Award, and have won the Per Diem Poetry Prize, Maine Literary Award, Nautilus Book Award, an Independent Publisher Book Award, and Golden Crown Literary Award. As the creator of the Beautiful Things Project, Arisa curates poetic collaborations that are rooted in Black queer women’s ways of knowing. She is a Cave Canem fellow and serves on the Community Advisory Board for Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. Currently, in development with composer Jessica Jones, Arisa is working on Post Pardon: The Opera. arisawhite.com

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How to Submit

Black Lawrence Press accepts submissions and payment of the entry fee exclusively through our online submission manager, Subfolio. We are not able to accept submissions via email or postal mail.

Arisa White

Works By Arisa White

Black Pearl

How to Submit