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Griffin Rockwell (xe/they)

@daftrockwell.bsky.social
257 followers 102 following 33 posts

• queer poet • master of science fiction • cat parent • Godzilla enthusiast • MFA Iowa Writers’ Workshop MLitt University of Dundee linktr.ee/griffinrockwell

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Griffin Rockwell (xe/they) @daftrockwell.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
I’m so excited to be teaching this 4-part Zoom workshop starting Sunday! Come join us!! (Tuition assistance is available.) Register here: iowacitypoetry.com/workshops/fo...
iowacitypoetry.com
Form's Not Dead: New and Invented Forms
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Griffin Rockwell (xe/they) @daftrockwell.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
New poem in @redividermag.bsky.social! So excited to be featured alongside the other amazing authors in this issue. Here’s a snippet—check out the rest here (and def read the rest of the issue, too!): redivider.emerson.edu/three-body-p...
Excerpt of a visual poem by Griffin Rockwell titled “Three Body Problem.”
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Griffin Rockwell (xe/they) @daftrockwell.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
A teaser of my poem in this quarter’s issue! So excited and grateful to be featured again in Up the Staircase — you can read the rest of the poem (and everyone else’s great work!) following the links below.
The opening of Griffin’s poem “Passing Through.” Text reads: 

I like being right
I say to a friend, which is true 
but maybe I shouldn't flaunt it 
the sun, that liar, has come out
 bright which I guess I appreciate 
somebody has to and it won't be me 
there are a surprising number 
of rainbow flags on Ronalds Street 
along with crabapples on this tree 
and tiger lilies in the front beds 
my sheets need a wash but when 
don't they, know this is a surprise to me 
the jackhammers never stop
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HAD @havehashad.com · 17/03/2026
what's a better "after" than "—after the many torn shirts of Captain James T. Kirk"?? today from Elizander Espenschied: www.havehashad.com/lvu3p
havehashad.com
IF ONLY WE HAD MEDICINE LIKE THAT TODAY by Elizander Espenschied
—after the many torn shirts of Captain James T. Kirk Every the opens his select around the His keeps this a simple His remove a replace his In this is a brief he catches his less the
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Casey Stegman @caseystegman.com · 17/03/2026
Happy Richard Kimble Narrow Escape Day!
Harrison Ford in the St Patrick’s Day Parade scene from THE FUGITIVE
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Interstellar Flight Press @interstellarflight.bsky.social · 28/10/2025
At Interstellar Flight Mag, R. Thursday interviews IFP author Griffin Rockwell on their new book of poetry, LISTEN-a poetic creature, a book-length SFF cento inspired by the greats (and not-so-greats) of SFF history. medium.com/@richaund...
medium.com
Greater Gestalt: An Interview with Griffin Rockwell
Author of LISTEN — A Poetic Creature, Out Now from Interstellar Flight Press
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Holly Lyn Walrath @hollylynwalrath.bsky.social · 31/10/2025
A lovely interview about this groundbreaking poetry book. LISTEN is a treat for the SFF canon nerds and so subversive.
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Jay Besemer @divinetailor.bsky.social · 12/10/2025
preorder my friend griffin’s latest specpo volume at a discount via bookshop!
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Chloe N. Clark @pintsncupcakes.bsky.social · 11/10/2025
Was an honor to blurb this wonderful book!
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Griffin Rockwell (xe/they) @daftrockwell.bsky.social · 11/10/2025
“I had worked hard for nearly two years…” Author copies are here and I’m thrilled!! Grateful to @mickmakesmagic.bsky.social for the cover, @taylorbyas.bsky.social / @pintsncupcakes.bsky.social / Warren Longmire for blurbs, and of course Holly at @interstellarflight.bsky.social for picking it up!!
Griffin’s new chapbook, “LISTEN—“, lays on top of a collection of science fiction-related patches on a black background.
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Griffin Rockwell (xe/they) @daftrockwell.bsky.social · 06/10/2025
TOMORROW!!!!!!
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Chloe N. Clark @pintsncupcakes.bsky.social · 05/09/2025
Was delighted to blurb this wonderful book!
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Griffin Rockwell (xe/they) @daftrockwell.bsky.social · 05/09/2025
It’s real and it’s coming soon—on Oct. 6, my latest chapbook will release!! This is a love letter to discovery and science fiction and the first book-length poem I’ve written. Preorder now here: www.interstellarflightpress.com/listen.html and join us at the Zoom launch party on Oct. 6!
Cover art for Griffin Rockwell’s forthcoming book “LISTEN—“ which features an androgynous person staring at the viewer, outlined in purple, with a starry background.
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Griffin Rockwell (xe/they) @daftrockwell.bsky.social · 18/08/2025
Chicago! Tonight at 7! So excited to read with @nberlat.bsky.social, @saramatson.bsky.social, @ejoylevinson.bsky.social, and my wonderful co-author Elena Rielinger Ferguson!
Poster advertising a reading tonight at 7pm in Chicago with Noah Berlatsky, Griffin Rockwell and Elena Rielinger Ferguson, Sara Matson, and Elizabeth Joy Levinson. Address is Pilsen Community Books at 1102 W 18th St, Chicago IL 60608.
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Jay Besemer @divinetailor.bsky.social · 21/07/2025
this i really want to go to, because @saramatson.bsky.social & @daftrockwell.bsky.social in one beloved place together 😻 hell yeah
an e-flyer for a ghost city press summer series event at pilsen community books, 8-18 at 7 pm, featuring noah berlatsky, elena rielinger fergusen, elizabeth joy levinson, sara matson and griffin rockwell.
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Griffin Rockwell (xe/they) @daftrockwell.bsky.social · 09/05/2025
1st 2025 pub, ft. Creature from the Black Lagoon references, gender feelings, and shadow selves! Thanks @littlemissbleah.bsky.social for picking it up 💙 Find the anthology here: www.defunktmag.com/product-page...
Picture of thr Creature from the Black Lagoon swimming under a woman, with this text overlaid: 

From “I Go Looking For My Shadow Self—Lose Her” in the Defunkt surreal confessional anthology. 

Poem excerpt reads: 
“My body is an old black and white movie, a lagoon with a creature stirring in its depths. I dream my shadow self swims beside me, silhouette tenuous against the water’s edges.”
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John Wiswell @wiswell.bsky.social · 25/11/2024
Maybe you're forgetful, like I am. You can turn on reminders! Settings -> Accesibility -> Require alt text. Done! Easy accessibility.
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Griffin Rockwell (xe/they) @daftrockwell.bsky.social · 16/01/2025
Starting Perry Janes’ book “Find Me When You’re Ready” and having to pause in the prelude. Wow.
Poem by Perry Janes, titled “Love Poem as Trojan Horse.” Poem reads: 

The forest fires above Los Angeles have crept down
The hills overnight, where this morning their scorched 
Sunrise rouges my fiddlehead fern. Sometimes 
Hope is a question of redirecting the camera. 

A friend tells me he has to trick himself into feeling 
Anything but numb for the world. What won’t burn? 
Not the patchwork quilt Tina bought 
For our engagement. Not the brewery growlers

Stacked along our wine crate bookshelves, teacups 
Glazed with our fingerprints. The fake stars
Glued to our ceiling in constellations forever 
Spelling fortune. Not the anything we truly cherish—

I used to prize clarity without compromise. 
I used to want suffering center-stage, well lit
In the lens. Now, it’s changed. So many
Routes in the heart’s city, steadily walled. 

So much need for a gentle hand pulling
Focus from one fire to another, the tug
That leads me from my window out
Into the night, our night, a blanket

Tossed around our shoulders, full
Bellies swaying, her body stamped
On mine as we stumble to the gates.
If it must be ruin, if it must come

To ruin: Love, open me.
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Griffin Rockwell (xe/they) @daftrockwell.bsky.social · 13/01/2025
Apparently today is the day they hit the Breach. In honor of that, have a snippet from my abecedarian Self-Portrait as Pacific Rim—or check out the whole thing here: www.freezeraypoetry.com/gretchen-roc...
Excerpt from Griffin Rockwell’s “Self-Portrait as Pacific Rim,” which reads: 

Adaptability / has always been an asset / 
Building ourselves / new bodies / new strength 
Cherno coyote crimson Corinthian chrome
Danger / the names we give ourselves / matter 
Exoskeletons / are as strong as / we make them 
Fighting unwinnable wars / every apocalypse more 
Grim than the last / we think of ourselves / as beyond 
Human / we already see a body / as something bigger
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SeaGoatScreamsPoetry(Ankh Spice) @seagoatscreams.bsky.social · 28/12/2024
New poem in-the-world, rare rare for me this year. Beyond grateful to this circle for its soft landing. Here's to long-ago friends, escape vehicles so ancient they only had a tape deck, every too-young-nuthoused kid— and to you, still playing the hidden track.
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Griffin Rockwell (xe/they) @daftrockwell.bsky.social · 24/12/2024
Hard to believe it, but my first semester at the Workshop is done. (Now that grades are in, it feels real!) Never could’ve imagined this is how and where I would end my year, but incredibly grateful to be here.
Griffin stands in front of a sun setting behind a University of Iowa building. They are wearing a teal shirt and cicada collar pins and smiling.
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Anthony Frame @anthonyframe.bsky.social · 22/12/2024
Girl in foreground labeled "6 new poem ideas", boy in midground labeled "me" looking at girl in foreground, and another girl in the background labeled "the poem I spent over a month figuring out and am finally starting to make headway on" looking angry at the boy
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Chloe N. Clark @pintsncupcakes.bsky.social · 03/12/2024
I'm the poem of the day at @swwim.bsky.social 🥺 www.swwim.org?fbclid=PAY2x...
swwim.org
SWWIM
SWWIM publishes, promotes, & celebrates women writers.
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Adam Gianforcaro @adamg.bsky.social · 29/11/2024
BLACK FRIDAY BOOK SALES 🧵 There are so many! Please add any that I missed.
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Gabino Iglesias @gabino.bsky.social · 26/11/2024
One short message from a reader is all it takes to turn a bad day around. Want to drop an author a line? Please do so. Trust me, it means the world to us.
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Amorak Huey @amorak.bsky.social · 27/11/2024
Thank you to @puneetdutt.bsky.social for including this prose poem in the new issue of The Ex-Puritan -- ex-puritan.ca/adventure-ar...
ex-puritan.ca
Adventure / Ars Poetica
Read Amorak Huey's poem "Adventure / Ars Poetica" in the Schism issue of The Ex-Puritan, then check out the Austin Clarke Prize in Literary Excellence!
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Griffin Rockwell (xe/they) @daftrockwell.bsky.social · 26/11/2024
“Nothing but the trees offered sympathy – their spindly arms reaching out as I tasted the new vocabulary of flight…”
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Griffin Rockwell (xe/they) @daftrockwell.bsky.social · 26/11/2024
This is a (belated birthday?) @tomsnarsky.bsky.social appreciation post!! Want to read lots of really lovely and varied poems you might never find otherwise? Want to experience the joy of bite-sized poems? Follow Tom and you will not be disappointed. ✨ Great if you’re joining this site for poetry!
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Griffin Rockwell (xe/they) @daftrockwell.bsky.social · 26/11/2024
Too many good quotes to pick one to pull. Read this!!!
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River River Books @riverriverbooks.bsky.social · 25/11/2024
We are having a sale this week, and when we tell you that a single book sale is a big deal, we mean it 📚💙 Shop small, shop local, buy direct from small presses. Keep us here! 30% discount, free shipping with code THANKS 🩷 riverriverbooks.org/store/
Four poetry titles:

GEOGRAPHY
THAT
DOES NOT HURT 15
CARLA SOFIA
FERREIRA

AN EYE IN EACH SQUARE
LAUREN
CAMP

Dean
Memphis
Edelman

Bullet
points
a lyric
jennifer a sutherland

River River Books
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Todd Dillard @toddedillard.bsky.social · 25/11/2024
one of two new poems in @ex-puritan.bsky.social today among so many, many friends! "...she says a poem where nothing impossible happens in it, just the truth, and I say OK and put her in this poem and she sprouts forty two robin wings down her neck and back and legs..."
My Daughter Asks Me to Write an Honest Poem

And when I ask what she means she says a poem
where nothing impossible happens in it, just the truth,
and I say OK and put her in this poem and she sprouts
forty two robin wings down her neck and back and legs
and she says why would you do that, that’s not true
and I say OK I say Sorry and I put an orchard
in her arms, a huge orchard, with rows of pear trees,
and it’s spring and a million white blossoms fur her skin like snow
and she says DAD she says THIS ISN’T REAL and
I say I am sorry my love I didn’t mean to it’s just that
but it’s too late, she’s gone upstairs, I hear her feet
march across the floorboards, soft claps
like a dozen cages closing in a bird shop that specializes
in songless birds, and once more winter settles softly
in my mind, I walk my orchard’s empty rows and remember
how full my arms used to be when my daughter was young,
how busy my hands, my sad, empty hands
reaching for this liar’s pen.
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Griffin Rockwell (xe/they) @daftrockwell.bsky.social · 22/11/2024
“as if my tongue / is not the stumble it is, as if my knees are not raw / from months trying to please this language…”
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Chloe N. Clark @pintsncupcakes.bsky.social · 20/11/2024
I've been writing professionally for almost two decades (???) including publishing 7 books (and another forthcoming) and helping run a lit mag for 7 years. I've learned some important lessons in that time. So I'm going to thread some of them here:
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SeaGoatScreamsPoetry(Ankh Spice) @seagoatscreams.bsky.social · 20/11/2024
Here in Aotearoa it's Trans Day Of Remembrance. Every year, we light the candle Cate was gifted in Thailand, pour love & memory into the flicker & smoke, let it reach the dead. And we cry. This year, in the current shadow, more than ever. Friends, how we love you. Stay with us, any way you can.
A candle with three wicks, all alight. Its edge, picked opaque with light, is a green wax leaf with distinct veins, as if the whole is wrapped in foliage. The centre with the wicks is pale orange. To the right of the candle is laid a deep red rose. Strong shadows lend this picture solemnity and quiet.
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SeaGoatScreamsPoetry(Ankh Spice) @seagoatscreams.bsky.social · 17/11/2024
For #smallpoemsunday on our downundermonday - a fav wee quiet beauty from Andrea Cohen, & one from me - for the light-crawled (with thx to Black Bough Poetry for the latter's silvery home)
Ghosting

How cavalier
people are―
with language
and with silence.
Any ghost will
tell you―
the last thing
we mean
to do
is leave you.Spring, loading

Weal of daylight-hill-split still
by winter's fading whip. What follows
the crack? A tunnelled clap of strange unsound: small prey holding sniff, pillars of nerve-beat candling in the grass. Blink and the leapt sun melts a hundred shadows burrowed. Every season maintains its weapon, hunts for keeps-every skin crawled by light, a temporary win.
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Tom Snarsky @tomsnarsky.bsky.social · 17/11/2024
it would be hard to overstate how much I think everyone should read Margaret Ross’s new book — I’ve reread it twice already and it’s fast becoming an all-time favorite: the-song-cave.com/products/sat...
the-song-cave.com
Saturday by Margaret Ross
Margaret Ross’s highly anticipated second collection of poems, Saturday, chronicles a brute education in love and decorum through ceremony starter kits, basement classrooms, and a mission school turne...
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Majda Gama @majda.bsky.social · 16/11/2024
Forgive the shadow, but I keep forgetting this beautiful issue came out & that I’m in it & I’m proud I wrote a poem about my cats that’s also about the universe.
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Courtney Pasko @cpasko.bsky.social · 12/11/2024
Really love this poem, "Queer Desire," by @daftrockwell.bsky.social in @havehashad.com today: "I metaphor myself into becoming, being, suppressing any want—which, in its original etymology, meant lacking. Only later did it connote desire." www.havehashad.com/hadposts/que...
havehashad.com
Queer Desire by Griffin Rockwell
the underwater sequences are mesmerising. a country still lingering over the national loss of so many citizens, and the horrifying fear that more could be lost via nuclear fire, creating a creature to...
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HAD @havehashad.com · 12/11/2024
amazing new poem today from Griffin Rockwell! "The eternal queer question is whether you want to be 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 someone or 𝘣𝘦 them. I start becoming someone my younger self would love..." www.havehashad.com/47x1l
havehashad.com
Queer Desire by Griffin Rockwell
the underwater sequences are mesmerising. a country still lingering over the national loss of so many citizens, and the horrifying fear that more could be lost via nuclear fire, creating a creature to…
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