Winner of the 2018 A. Poulin Jr. Poetry Prize

Jan-Henry Gray was born in the Philippines, grew up in California, and worked as a chef in San Francisco for more than 12 years. He lived undocumented in the US for more than 32 years. A graduate of San Francisco State University and Columbia College Chicago’s MFA program, he received the inaugural Undocupoets Fellowship and awards from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation and the Academy of American Poets. Jan's writing can be found in Nepantla: An Anthology for Queer Poets of Color, The Rumpus, Tupelo Quarterly, Colorado Review, DIAGRAM, Fourteen Hills, The Margins, Quarterly West, Puerto del Sol, and other journals. He is the author of the chapbook Selected Emails from speCt! Books. His first book, Documents, was chosen by D.A. Powell as the winner of BOA Editions’ 2018 Poulin Poetry Prize. He is a Kundiman fellow and a Visiting Assistant Professor at Adelphi University. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.

CV

“Documents opens every closet and drawer and says: ‘search me.’ It says ‘[hide History].’

It is a full disclosure and a redaction, a history and its endless revisions.” —D.A. Powell

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“‘The Philippines is ghost-country,’ writes Jan-Henry Gray, in this gorgeous debut collection, and indeed, Gray's speakers can be thought of as ghostly, muted and aching for connection, in the specifics of place, in language, in poetry. These are poems of thwarted belonging, and the emotional consequences of institutional and social invisibility.”

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"The brilliance of Documents rests within its ability to remind us that poetry is everywhere…I am so thankful for this book and how important it is for the literary world, especially the growing canon of migrant literary activists!”

Barbara Jane Reyes

Christopher Soto

POETRY

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Jet Fuel Review

Meat

Hyphen Magazine

JUNE AT OCEAN BEACH​

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The Margins

Frank Quizon Gray, Jr. III 

Immigration and Naturalization Services

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DIAGRAM 19.2

EXAQUA

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Quarterly West’s [Please Explain], a special folio on undocumented poets. Also featured on Academy of American Poets

I’m a Good Person Because My Childhood Was

Kundiman and Poetry Coalition’s “What Is It, Then, Between Us?: Poetry & Democracy,” curated by Janine Joseph

Across the Pacific Ocean

egress

The Puritan

April 1984

Across the Pacific Ocean

Nepantla: Queer Poets of Color

I-797-C

Academy of American Poets, 

Maid Poem #7: HR

The Rumpus

I-797-C

XXX-XX-0142

On Translation

Terminal Couplet

Birth Certificate

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Colorado Review

Mackerel

Maid Poem #2

The Shade Journal

Hindi Ko Alam Ng Sasabihin Ko

Puerto Del Sol

In ‘The Store with Beautiful Things'

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Small Po[r]tions

Missing Documents

Southern Humanities Review

egress 

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Assaracus

Sapling 

Love Poem with a Hole in It 

Maid Poem #1: The Housemaid

Fourteen Hills

PNW

Tupelo Quarterly #7

Acknowledgements

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Tupelo Quarterly #5

Balikbayan 

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Transfer Magazine #107

Our Father Made Movies for us to See

Transfer Magazine #106

For Tanzania 

California Triptych

CHAPBOOK

Selected Emails

(speCt! Books)

a chapbook in unwitting collaboration with Chris Philpot

OTHER 

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Teachers & Writers Magazine

"Better Advocacy for Undocumented Students"

Poetry Foundation, Harriet Blog,

"DACA Rescinded & Poets Respond"

NewCity

"Inherited Histories: A Review of The Displaced Children of Displaced Children by Faisal Mohyuddin"

NewCity

"This is Chicago: A Review of Black Queer Hoe" by Britteney Black Rose Kapri and Citizen Illegal by José Olivarez

NewCity
"Webbed Design: A Review of Break the Habit" by Tara Betts

MEDIA

5/20

Words Together Worlds Apart: Sex

Zoom, 8:30 PM EST

With Katie Condon, Flower Conroy, Erika Meitner, and Rachel Neve Midbar. 

Hosted by Kelly Grace Thomas and Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach.

5/24

Maracuyá Peach presents: TV Dinner

Zoom, 5 PM EST

With Tara Jayakar

Hosted by Devyn Mañibo and Danilo Machado

Tickets

5/26 

Undocupoetry Week: A Benefit for Connecticut UndocuFund

Instagram Live: @CTUndocuFund, 5pm EST

with Danilo Machado

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5/27

Undocupoetry Week: A Benefit for Connecticut UndocuFund

Instagram Live: @CTUndocuFund, 5pm EST

With Esther Lin and Janine Joseph

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5/27

From Across the Waters ****CANCELED****

Berl's Poetry

Brooklyn, NY

Readers TBD, curated by Olga Livshin

6/22

Poetry Reading ****CANCELED****

The Poetry Project

With Michelle Peñaloza and Kay Ulanday Barrett

Past Events 

Press

Kenyon Review
Review by Anni Liu

On Admission: A Review of Documents by Jan-Henry Gray

"There was a part of me that opened this book hoping to find some part of myself or own experiences in it—the frisson of recognition is so compelling. But the actual intimate presence of another consciousness is an even more urgent encounter and one that I rarely find outside the realm of art."

Kenyon Review
Interview

Poetry Today #5: Visibility and Poeisis Edited by Ruben Quesada.

Poetry Today is a series dedicated to learning about the characteristics of poets and poetry from writers who have published a collection of poetry, full-length or chapbook, within the year.

RHINO Reviews
Review by Luisa A. Igloria

Ungovernable

"With the breath of 10,000 horses, with hawkers of cassava cakes, with sleepers in siesta hours and hoarders of palm sugar, he knows the only true archive of our humanity is in the moments we press the ungovernable details of our existence more sharply against questions meant to erase or level them out."

Bustle

Recommendation 

Documents is listed as one of 26 New Poetry Collections By LGBTQIA+ Writers To Look Out For In 2019.

Rebellious Magazine

Interview with Jera Brown

"Three Poets of Color on How Their Books Came to Be"

With poets mai c. doan and Xandria Phillips​.

Poets & Writers

Recommendation 

Documents is included in Page One,  as one of a dozen new and noteworthy books.

Poets & Writers

The short film Reverse Engineering is featured in Poets & Writers Theater.

The Academy of American Poets

Review by Laura Eve Engel

Meta- cognitive and openhearted, this book offers itself as a kind of instruction manual for how one might identify structures in writing and in the world that are designed to limit access, rather than grant it—as well as how one might resist and reinvent them."

Newcity Lit

Review by Jarrett Neal

Within “Documents,” the debut collection by local poet Jan-Henry Gray, the plight of the undocumented gains voice and agency, as poem after poem moves readers through the love, loss and labor of a population whose survival, sadly, relies on invisibility and impermanence."

Publishers Weekly

Review 

“The only way to know a song is to sing it,’ Gray writes, an apt piece of wisdom for a coming-of-age story in poems that twists through states and decades, immigration processes, chorus-like poems exploring bodies of water and extended family drama.”

barbarajanereyes.com

Recommendation 

Who I’m Reading Right Now: Marianne Chan and Jan-Henry Gray

“You know, I first read Gray’s poem, “Acknowledgments” a few years ago…My response to the poem was more like multiple responses, starting with a simultaneous exhilaration and revulsion, which made me come back to the poem again and again. I was like, dang, this child is talking SHIT…"

Book Riot

Recommendation 

Documents is listed as "3 Books I Can’t Wait For in 2019"

"Not only was his story compelling, but his writing was masterful. He could write these sharp sentences that even after I had forgotten the exact wording, I would remember the feel of them for days afterward."