BLIND(cite) x Mantissa Poetry Review

Sean West is a Meanjin-based poet, disability support worker, and workshop facilitator. He has received an Arts Queensland Individuals Fund grant in 2021 and has been shortlisted for the Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize in 2021, 2020 and 2019. He is the founding editor of Blue Bottle Journal.

Find him at www.callmemariah.com

Guido Melo is an Afro-Brazilian-Latinx multilingual author and poet based in Naarm (Melbourne). Currently undertaking a Bachelor of Arts in Writing & Digital Media at Victoria University, his words can be found in Meanjin Quarterly, Kill Your Darlings Magazine, Peril Magazine, Colournary Magazine, Mantissa Poetry, Ascension Magazine, SBS Voices, SBS Portuguese, Cordite, Voz Limpia, Alma Preta Jornalismo and Guia Negro News. Guido is a member of the Sweatshop Literacy Movement, a columnist for Negrê and a contributor to Growing Up African in Australia (Black Inc., 2019) and Racism: Stories on Fear, Hate & Bigotry (Sweatshop, 2021).

Raynen Bajette O’Keefe/Amos is an artist and writer, living and working on unceded Wangal Land. They hold a BA in Film Studies and inhabit the peripheries of dance, somatics, community work, digital media, film, and writing. They have participated in group shows and performances, and their writing-based work has recently been published with Mantissa Poetry Review, The Emerging Writers’ Festival, Scum, Red Room Poetry, Dancehouse Diary, and others.

Josephine Mead is a visual artist, curator and writer based on Boon Wurrung and Wurundjeri woi-wurrung Country. She works through photography, sculpture, installation and writing to explore personal notions of support. Her recent work has positioned female family members as support-structures, considered the body as a site of discursive practice, explored notions of deep listening, and examined the temporal and sonic nature of writing and photography. She has held solo exhibitions at c3 contemporary art space, TAB Gallery (Turkey), Bus Projects and the Monash and RMIT faculty galleries. She has shown work in group exhibitions at a wide range of venues, including Blindside, Stockroom, Craft Victoria, Stacks Projects, Counihan Gallery, Five Walls, St Heliers Street Gallery, Kings Artist Run, Seventh, Blue Oyster Space (New Zealand) and as part of the TOMI Arts Festival (Japan). In 2018 she undertook the Arquetopia Foundation Residency (Puebla, Mexico), the Kings Emerging Writer’s Program, the Macfarlane Fund Residency (Kyneton, Victoria) and was published by Art+Australia and un projects. In 2019 she was awarded a Career Development Grant through the Australia Council for the Arts to undertake the Tasarim Bakkali TAB Residency (Istanbul, Turkey) and the Córtex Frontal Residency (Arraiolos, Portugal). In 2020 she commenced the ZK/U Residency at Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik (Berlin, Germany). She is a current Room to Create studio artist at Collingwood Yards (supported by City of Yarra), is the Chair of Artistic Directors for Blindside, and runs Co- Publishing, with Christine McFetridge.