An online journal of poetry, art, interviews, and reviews.

April Michelle Bratten

​Anuja Ghimire

Up the Staircase Quarterly

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General call

Thomas Kneeland is a poet, educator, community leader, and visual artist. He is author of the chapbook, We Be Walkin’ Blackly in the Deep (Marian University Department of Media, Communication, and Design), and one of ten 2022 Frontier Poetry Global Poetry Prize finalists for the continent of Africa. He is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of The Elevation Review. His poetry is published or forthcoming in Up the Staircase Quarterly, South Florida Poetry Journal, INverse Poetry Archives, Rigorous Magazine, and elsewhere. Kneeland holds a BA in English from DePauw University, an MA in Ministry from Wesley Seminary at Indiana Wesleyan University, and an MFA in Poetry from Butler University. Kneeland was recently awarded a Speculative Play and Just Futurities Residency from the Indianapolis Arts and Humanities Institute at Indiana University-Indianapolis.

Short Bio

Born in California, raised in Mississippi, and transplanted to Indiana, Thomas Kneeland writes poetry to create a time vault his daughter can walk into long after he’s gone. Having gone so far without answers to questions he’s asked, he attempts to tether himself to the past, present, and future through the world he creates in his poems. Thomas is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of The Elevation Review, and is finishing his final semester in Butler University’s MFA program. 

He is the author of the chapbook We Be Walkin’ Blackly in the Deep (Marian University Department of Media, Communication, and Design). Recently named as one of ten finalists for the 2022 Frontier Global Poetry Prize (Africa), Thomas’s poems can be found—or are forthcoming—in Up the Staircase Quarterly, South Florida Poetry Journal, INverse Poetry Archives, Rigorous Magazine, and elsewhere.


Fun Bio

Thomas Kneeland is a poet, educator, community leader, and visual artist. He is author of the chapbook, We Be Walkin’ Blackly in the Deep (Marian University Department of Media, Communication, and Design), and one of ten 2022 Frontier Poetry Global Poetry Prize finalists for the continent of Africa. He is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of The Elevation Review. His poetry is published or forthcoming in Up the Staircase Quarterly, South Florida Poetry Journal, INverse Poetry Archives, Rigorous Magazine, and elsewhere. Kneeland holds an MFA in Poetry from Butler University.

Shorter Bio

/näˈstaljə, nəˈstaljə/

Capsicum

"I inhale to make room in my ribs for your emptiness,
linger with this longing for less—just me
and you, alone, beneath a half-moon’s halo."

Ode to Alone

I KNOW THERE'S STILL A WAR OUTSIDE

It sounds like bickering but I realize it’s not: the couple
shuffles just ahead of us toward the seafood department
one gesturing from captain’s seat behind the cart’s
handlebar and one leaning into the cold case. Get some
salmon, too. Where?...

Shrimp (a Love Poem)

A Review of After Sappho by Selby Wynn Schwartz

"it won't have flies in it this time - i swear. the stores / don't put them there." 

Up the Staircase Quarterly

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