On Friday, June 21, the Woody Guthrie Center celebrates Pride Month with an all-queer People’s Poetry. Hosted by Lambda Literary Award-winning poet Quinn Carver Johnson, this event will feature readings from talented Tulsa artists Claire Collins, Crystal Stone and Jes McCutchen.
TICKETS
Free for Woody Guthrie Center members
$5 non-members
About People's Poetry
Woody Guthrie was an artist in multiple mediums. In addition to his music and paintings, Woody was a prolific writer, producing a bulk of poems, essays, short stories, and more.
Often called the “Poet of the People”, Woody’s writing was an important tool both for his personal self-expression and his life-long commitment to activism.
Woody Guthrie once wrote, “A folk song is what’s wrong and how to fix it, or it could be who’s hungry and where their mouth is or who’s out of work and how to fix it or who’s broke and where the money is or who’s carrying a gun and where the peace is.”
This bent toward repairing the damages of the world was at the forefront of his creative drive. People’s Poetry carries on the legacy of Woody Guthrie and his writing while also highlighting the voice of today’s poets who use their craft towards that same end: highlighting the injustices of the world and pushing us all towards a better world.
Claire Collins
Claire Collins is an actor, poet, teaching artist, and co-founder of Poetic Justice, an innovative program aimed at facilitating literacy and poetry workshops within carceral settings. They currently serve on the Living Arts spoken word committee Their short film i love you like science, received the Linklater Award for Best Dialogue at Austin Arthouse Film Festival. They have been featured on TV shows such as The Gifted on Fox, Tyler Perry’s The Haves and the Have Nots and their forthcoming feature film Carnation, has been named one of Australia’s Top 100 most anticipated films of 2025. Their poetry has been published in This Land Press, Emerge Magazine, New Words Press & Super Present Magazine. They are of Mohawk, French, and Dutch descent, Collins is deeply invested in the cultural preservation and revitalization of their indigenous heritage as a member of the Six Nations of the Grand River.
Jes McCutchen
Jes has been writing and creating since she can remember, and has always been drawn to literary and artistic spheres.
With degrees in literature and education, she taught public school for eight years, and is currently the director for an after school arts program at Arts at 302 in downtown Broken Arrow.
She has written and published two novels, Chronicles of My Alien Invasion Life and A Mean Piece of Water, with a third scheduled to come out in August 2024. All three are set in Oklahoma and feature diverse casts of queer characters fighting things like aliens and gators and swamp things.
CRYSTAL STONE
Crystal Stone is author of six collections of poetry including Knock-Off Monarch (2019), All the Places I Wish I Died (2021), Gym Bra (2022), Civic Duty (2022), This is Not a Poem (2023), and White Lies (2024). Her poems have been published in numerous national and international poetry journals including The Threepenny Review, Salamander, poetry Daily and many others. She received her MFA from Iowa State University, where she gave a TEDx talk entitled ‘The Transformative Power of Poetry.’ You can find more of her publications at her website: www.crystalbstone.com
