Felix New Writing: CM Burroughs

CM Burroughs is the author of “The Vital System" (2012) and has works published in various publications, such as Ploughshares and Best American Experimental Writing (2016). Burroughs' poems explore and complicate the intersections of race, desire, embodiment, and loss. Such interests spark some surprising voices in her poem. For example, in "Dear incubator" the speaker shares, "How can I ask you from inside the poem—what senses did I have so early...so unformed."

Burroughs currently teaches as assistant professor of poetry at Columbia College in Chicago. In addition to receiving multiple grants and fellowships she's crafted poems in response to art installations at both the Studio Museum of Harlem and the Warhol Museum. The false boundaries between art, desire, and the public are continuously challenged and dissolved by Burroughs to remind these spheres all come together in everyday embodiment.