Bellagio Residency: May 2023
Project: “Seasonal Adversities: An Ekphrastic Graphic Poetry Collaboration”
Joel M. Toledo is an award-winning author and poet who has published five books of poems, and whose work have appeared in The Iowa Review, The Washington Square, ZYZZYVA, and Cordite Poetry Review, among other publications. He has received the Bridport Prize and the Don Carlos Palanca Awards for his poetry, and was a poetry fellow of the Iowa International Writers Program. A resident in 2011, Joel returned to Bellagio in May 2023 to collaborate with Panch Alvarez on a poetry and visual art project offering first-hand insights on the immediacy of the climate crisis in the Philippines, with the goal of increasing the role of Eco poetry and eco-art in the modern world. He currently teaches literature at the University of Santo Tomas in Manila, The Philippines.