Nic Custer: “My hometown, Flint, Michigan, is verdant and brownfield, a city of ghosts, bars and church folk. It’s a tough place that built unions using stubborn Southern pride, a town disowned and turned into a punch line. My poetry aims to make sense of the simultaneous push and pull of living in a place that defined the blue collar American Dream but now could be mistaken for a nightmare. Although it has fallen from national headlines, Flint is still experiencing a water disaster. One hundred thousand residents negotiate daily challenges using bottled water for nearly everything from baby formula to brushing their teeth while paying the highest water rates in the country to avoid shut-off notices and Child Protective Services. The multi-generational effects of this unsolved crisis coupled with a continued lack of political autonomy and decades of unemployment, arson, and violence are central themes in my writing. As a poet, I often explore balancing frustration at bleak futures with a resistant call to action. I experiment with deconstructing official government and media narratives to better reflect how it feels to live in a city forced to poison itself by a revolving series of state-appointed Emergency Managers. My work at times personifies the physical environment to explore how it informs residents’ self-image. Although my experience is one out of many, it attempts to empower residents by giving voice to our hopes and trials.” (twitter)
