Still from "The Bridge" by Gabrielle Bates

Join us for a video poetry exhibition curated by Seattle Civic Poet Dujie Tahat, featuring work by Seattle poets Alex Gallo-Brown, Anastacia-Reneé, Bill Carty, Gabrielle Bates, Quenton Baker, and Troy Osaki! Learn more about the show and artists below.

ARTS at King Street Station is open Wed. – Sat. 11 a.m. – 5 p.m. and until 8 p.m. on First Thursdays. Admission is free. The gallery is located at 303 S. Jackson St., Top Floor, Seattle, WA 98104.

The Thing to Me Is Diminishing

On view April 9 – May 17

Poets are obsessed with images. While language is the currency of our trade, the intended purchase is, very often, the image. The image is the artifact of our imagination’s process. The image haunts us as we squeeze our eyes shut tight. When we open our eyes, the remnant of the image floats until it disappears into light. The poetic craft question, then, revolves around how we re-create the image in a poem. The image is more than a visual articulation, however, so the poet’s work is to manipulate, through language, all the onlooker’s senses. Images are absolute, so every attempt at rendering is a kind of failure.

The poet is a person like any other. When they see something that strikes them, they turn to the next person to show them. What the poet turns their attention to, what they deem worthy of the idiom of their own poetry is a question of politics, of ethics. “All good poetry depends on an ethical relation between imagination and image. Images are not ornaments; they are truths,” wrote the Irish poet Eavan Boland. “No poetic imagination can afford to regard an image as a temporary aesthetic maneuver. Once the image is distorted, the truth is demeaned.” 

The Thing to Me Is Diminishing is a curation of poetry videos by Seattle poets. Each has its own distinct aesthetic interests. In terms of style and substance, they have very little in common. What unifies them is the interpretive act between image and text. If you gave each poet on display here truth serum, they would likely admit that their final poetry video, as art object, took them further from the inciting image of the poem’s making. In making the thing, it begins to diminish. As with all art, the great hope is that what remains maintains some fidelity to the initial feeling, thought—or trigger, as Seattle poet Richard Hugo put it—this time, for you. 

Curator Bio

Dujie Tahat is a poet and critic living and working in Washington state. They are the 2025-26 Seattle Civic poet and author of three poetry chapbooks: Here I Am O My God, selected for a Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship; Salat, winner of the Tupelo Press Sunken Garden Chapbook Award and longlisted for the 2020 PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry Collection; and Balikbayan, finalist for The New Michigan Press / DIAGRAM chapbook contest and the Center for Book Arts honoree. 

Dujie has earned fellowships from the National Book Critics Circle, Hugo House, Jack Straw Writing Program, and the Poetry Incubator, as well as scholarships from Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers’ Conference. Along with Luther Hughes and Gabrielle Bates, they cohost The Poet Salon podcast. Dujie serves as Critic-at-Large for Poetry Northwest and poetry editor for Moss.  

Artist Bios

Alex Gallo-Brown is a writer and labor organizer from Seattle. A graduate of Garfield High School in Seattle and the Pratt Institute in New York, he is the author of Variations of Labor (Chin Music Press, 2019), a collection of poems and short stories. He lives in the Central District with his wife and two daughters. 
 
Anastacia-Reneé (She/They) is an award-winning queer writer, educator, interdisciplinary artist, playwright, former radio host, TEDX speaker, and podcaster. She is the author of (v.) (Gramma/Black Ocean), Forget It (Black Radish); Side Notes from the Archivist (HarperCollins/Amistad), and Here in the (Middle) of Nowhere (HarperCollins/Amistad). Side Notes from the Archivist was selected as one of “NYPL Best Books of 2023,” and The American Library Associations (RUSA) “Notable Books of 2024.” Anastacia-Reneé is a recipient of the James W. Ray Distinguished Artist Award and, she was selected by NBC News as part of the list of “Queer Artist of Color Dominate 2021’s Must See LGBTQ Art Shows,” for “(Don’t Be Absurd) Alice in Parts” an installation at the Frye Art Museum. Anastacia-Reneé served as Seattle Civic Poet (2017-1019) during Seattle’s inaugural year of UNESCO status. Reneé was also Hugo House Poet-in-Residence, and Jack Straw Curator. Her work has been anthologized and published widely. 
 
Bill Carty lives in Seattle and is the author of two books of poetry: Huge Cloudy (Octopus Books, 2019) and We Sailed on the Lake (Bunny Presse/Fonograf Editions, 2023). 
 
Gabrielle Bates is the author of Judas Goat (Tin House, 2023), named a Best Book of 2023 by NPR and a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. She works for Open Books: A Poem Emporium, co-hosts the podcast The Poet Salon, and serves occasionally as visiting faculty for the University of Washington and the Tin House Writers’ Workshops. 
 
Quenton Baker is a poet, educator, and Cave Canem fellow. Their current focus is black interiority and the afterlife of slavery. Their work has appeared in The Offing, Jubilat, Prairie Schooner, The Rumpus and elsewhere. They are a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, and the recipient of the 2018 Arts Innovator Award from Artist Trust. They were a 2019 Robert Rauschenberg Artist in Residence and a 2021 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow. They are the author of we pilot the blood (The 3rd Thing, 2021) and ballast (Haymarket Books, 2023). 
 
Troy Osaki is a Filipino Japanese poet, organizer, and attorney. A three-time grand slam poetry champion, he has received fellowships from Kundiman, Hugo House, and the Jack Straw Cultural Center, as well as a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship. His work has appeared in Poetry, The Missouri Review, The Offing, and elsewhere. He served as the 2023-2024 Filipino Community Liaison for 4Culture’s Poetry in Public Program, promoting community-based poetry on King County transit. A member of the National Lawyers Guild, he earned his Juris Doctor from Seattle University School of Law, where he interned at Creative Justice, an arts-based alternative to incarceration for youth in King County. He lives in Seattle, WA. 

What to Expect

The Thing to Me Is Diminishing features six single channel video projections that incorporate poetry as voiceover and/or text on screen. The moving images depict natural and built landscapes, archival footage, as well as direct and abstract representations of the human form, including nudity. Themes include cultural history, personal narratives, and contemporary realities.