the
Midnight Draft
Poetry Collective
Poetry is often portrayed as an academic, even elitist art form, but it doesn't have to be! Words are free, and we should all have access to industry standard information. When we lift up our community, we all succeed together, and that's exactly what the Midnight Draft poets plan to do for one another! Whether that means sharing our resources and experience, offering feedback on new works, helping to promote poetry events, or even suggesting and discussing great reads, poets always do better when we work together.
Check out our current members below, visit one of our upcoming events, or browse the shop to see what our poets have recently published.
Interested in joining the collective?
Click this link to fill out an application form:
Meet our Members
Ivy Rozen
Ivy Rozen is an Asheville-based poet and free-expression advocate whose work has been published in Fine Art Globe, Chatham Life & Style Magazine, Education NC, Hot Pot Magazine, Penmen Review, Auvert Magazine, Loblolly Press, and Bottlecap Press. After her Free Verse residency in Vermont, Ivy studied creative writing with a focus in poetry at Southern New Hampshire University, where she received her undergraduate degree while serving in AmeriCorps. She hosts Flooded Poetry at the Flood Gallery Fine Art Center every Monday evening.
Ezekiel Snyder
Ezekiel is an optimistic cynic, he likes to look at this disturbed world with rose tinted glasses from his home in Raleigh, NC. An incorrigible poet, Ezekiel enjoys writing poems that stab at the core of the human experience, the small moments often forgotten, the ones that build over years to make us who we are. When not writing or reading poems he enjoys existing in the sunlight, working on his project bike, and low balling people on Facebook marketplace. There's nothing more important in this world than art!
Jamie Zimerman
Jamie is a writer, performer, and sometimes a musician. He creates with the intention to explore the unknown with wide eyed wonder. Letting the blessing of uncertainty guide his voice in sharing whatever comes to mind.
Alia Vera
Alia Vera and her poetry are inspired by the natural world, ecstatic experience, and the soul’s experience of being human. She is the founder of Sacred Poetry Circle and hosts poetry in the park on the first Sunday of each month at Haw Creek Park in Asheville.
Dylan Webster
Dylan lives and writes in the sweltering heat of Phoenix, AZ. He is author of the poetry collection, Dislocated (Quillkeepers Press, 2022), and his poetry and fiction have appeared, and are forthcoming, in several journals, including One Art: a journal of poetry, Pennine Platform, Amethyst Review, The Cannons Mouth by Cannon Poets Quarterly, Ballast Journal, Hush: A Journal of Noise, Wild Roof Journal, Hydration, Rise Phoenix College Journal, Ghost City Review, Resurrection Mag, 5enses Magazine, Last Leaves, and The Chamber Magazine. Dylan has also been included in anthologies by Quillkeeper Press, Neon Sunrise Publishing, and The Words Faire.
Alex Nawrocki
Alex Nawrocki is a silly Blue Ridge scribbler who's passionate about art, philosophy and nature. While much of his writing was inspired by a transformative cross-country road trip, Alex's poetry touches on several themes, including adventure, hypocrisy, and freedom. All of his work is available for free on his website!
Sarah Honeycrisp
Sarah is a queer, dyslexic, anarchist TCK, and writer. After graduating with a degree in psychology and communications, she spent seven years teaching English, facilitating literary workshops for women, and producing leadership seminars. Sarah now lives in the mountains of WNC where she pursues her passions for writing, philosophy, and syntrophic agroforestry. She has composed hundreds of poems, but has not yet made any effort to publish them. She is a provocative slam poet, a fierce advocate for freedom, and an ongoing evolution of self.
John Langmack
John is a poet and life coach who lives in Asheville. He published his first book of poems, God Bless the Roadkill, in 2022, and is publishing his second book this year. He works on Asheville's current longest running poetry slam with other members of Beasts of the Mountain.
Caleb Beissert
Caleb is translator of Beautiful: Translations from the Spanish, poems of Federico García Lorca and Pablo Neruda, published by New Native Press in 2013. Beissert’s poems, translations, or other writings have appeared in International Poetry Review, Tar River Poetry, Asheville Poetry Review, Red Earth Review, Terrain.org, The Citron Review, Flycatcher, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, Beatitude: Golden Anniversary 1959-2009, and Animal Poems (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2014). Beissert has been awarded grants from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Arts & Science Council for teaching poetry. Beissert is host of Poetry Open Mic Asheville, Artistic Director of Poetry Cabaret Collective, Co-editor of Redheaded Stepchild Magazine, and West Region Chair of the North Carolina Poetry Society’s Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet Series.
Justin Blackburn
Justin Blackburn is a Creator, Life Coach, Viral Slam Poet, Author, and Comedian. Always connected to his Spiritual Gifts, Justin began giving Intuitive Psychic Readings at 22 years old at Spiritual Shops in the Southeast. From there Justin was hired at different Spiritual Businesses such as Kimah Healing Art Center, Costa Rica Yoga Spa, and Willow Dreams to be their Intuitive Healer. He also gave workshops and psychic readings at Spiritual Festivals throughout the south.
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Gray Lee
Gray Lee (they/them), a native of Hickory, North Carolina, is an English and Creative Writing major at Lenoir-Rhyne University. A queer poet from Appalachia, Lee explores the influence of religious ideals on identity, expression, and lived experience. Through their work, Lee hopes to connect with and inspire other emerging writers and queer youth to understand that thriving is supremely better than merely surviving.
