In the past two years since I’ve turned my attention to becoming a Serious Writer, I’ve had the luck of meeting and working with some amazingly talented writers, and some really quality people. Daria-Ann Martineau happens to be both.

I met Daria-Ann at Idyllwild Summer Writers Week in 2018. We were both there as fellows, and paired as roommates. A naturally sweet but savvy person, I was glad she’s a poet and I’m a prose writer, because her poems mean business.

In the fall of 2018, with support from Split This Rock, Daria-Ann founded PRINT.

“PRINT (Poets Reclaiming Immigrant Narratives & Texts) is a workshop series that aims to uplift the voices of immigrants and their children in a political era that wishes to erase them from the cultural landscape. Participants examine poems, essays, and other types of writing in order to grow as poets and share their immigrant stories. Given the current media and political narratives– family separations, ICE raids, Muslim bans, and border walls– migrants need to tell our stories from an honest and human perspective. Our voices are at risk of being erased and our narratives rewritten to portray us as job thieves, gangsters, and terrorists with no right to exist in this country. A writing workshop focused on our migrant community poses a unique chance to combat these narratives and get back to understanding who we are, away from politics.”

Indeed.

PRINT gives poets resources and a platform, which are otherwise difficult, if not impossible, to find.

For up-to-date information on what PRINT is doing, follow them on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. If you’re in the DC metro area, keep an eye out for their workshops and events.

Daria-Ann Martineau was born and raised in Trinidad and Tobago. She is a Pushcart-nominated poet with an MFA in Poetry from New York University. She is an alumna of several writing conferences including Bread Loaf and the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley. Her poems have appeared in  Anomaly,  Narrative, and The Collagist, among others. She is the founder of PRINT- Poets Reclaiming Immigrant Narratives & Texts.