Mara Jebsen is a poet who is deeply marked by oral traditions, and interested in the staging, singing and storytelling of poetry. She studied public policy and African and African-American studies at Duke University, and holds an MFA in creative writing from NYU. Mara teaches the craft of essay-writing at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, and at some point during her years of teaching began to learn to write an essay, herself. She was raised in Philadelphia and Lome, and now lives in Brooklyn, where she is a consummate bruncher. Email: [email protected]
by Mara Jebsen I’m somewhere in Brooklyn when Geko hands me a card emblazoned with two highly stylized yellow roosters. They’re facing off, beaks up in each other’s beaks—their potbellied, swaybacked, braggadocious bird-bodies suggestive of a cheerful cockfight. The words “Que Bajo?” are printed under the roosters, in a phrase that functions like a bat…
by Mara Jebsen Part one, with photos by Syreeta Mcfadden (thebellepoque.tumblr.com) Una Poetisa Counts Her Blessings While Reading Woolf in a Brooklyn Cafe I like the sound of poetisa! 2. Louise Bourgeois drove a screwdriver down through my skull at the Guggenheim. 3. I am so proud to be une poete, the sun makes a…
by Mara Jebsen ” I deface the classroom walls and abuse french verse” There's a shadowy black-and-white room crammed with schoolboys in Francois Truffaut's film 400 Blows. You've got to keep your eye on the boy who is not the principle character; the boy who is squinch-faced and clench-knuckled; the irrepressibly clumsy one whose inkpen…