Emerging
Chantel Massey
Chantel Massey (she/her) is a recognized poet, bibliophile, plant mother, teaching artist, and anime lover based in Indiana. She is the author of Bursting At The Seams (VK Press, 2018), a 2019 Winter Tangerine Alum, 2019 Open Mouth Poetry resident Alum, and 2019 Best of Net Award nominee.
Massey is the founder of UnLearn Lit Arts, a poetry workshop series, serving to inspire writers through a Black classic and contemporary arts-centered curriculum. UnLearn is dedicated to the professional, artistic, and personal wellness and growth of poets, no matter the level of experience. Through poetry workshops, creative collaboration, and community building, language lovers are provided with tools and resources to amplify their creative writing pursuits and personal wellness.
Chantel carries consistent threads—human rights, social justice, and the Black experience—in her pieces with confessional and emotional honesty through the lenses of womanhood, identity, sexuality, and spirituality. Massey is on a life-long mission to inspire curiosity, celebration, creativity and challenge how we engage with the world. Find her works featured in FAFCollective, Indianapolis Review, Turnpike Magazine, and other online and print publications coming elsewhere.
Alongside performing poetry, Massey serves as board member and community outreach committee member for youth poetry organization, Word as Bond, and editor for Sidepiece Magazine. By day she is a special education teacher providing an equitable education to little humans, a student at Marian University studying to better provide for those little humans, and a 2020 Caliban Art board member.
2020 Emerging Shortlist: Bursting at the Seams: A Collection of Poetry
Do you remember the first day of school when you were a child? Your mom would lay out your clothes for you and there was an outfit you couldn’t fit any more. Imagine walking down the street and the seams to your outfit are tearing apart. You no longer can fit into the outfit someone else has picked out for you and you cannot allow them to keep picking out your clothes. You could no longer wear these outdated clothes because they were Bursting at the Seams! Bursting at the Seams: A Collection of Poetry by Chantel Massey uses vivid and vibrant imagery as an ode to womanhood as a black woman. Massey inspires and moves in her poetry through storytelling to foster a language and dialogue about rape culture effects on family, fighting illness, gossip, sexuality, being in love, falling out of love, womanhood, identity, spirituality, religion, about blackness and what it means to be black and/or safe in America as woman of color. She explores the complexities of intersectionality through poetry and lessons learned from her own experience walking into womanhood as a Black woman
