Aimee noel

About Aimee

Aimee Noel has twice been awarded the Ohio Art Council’s Individual Excellence Award for poetry and was an OAC Fellow at the Fine Arts Works Center. Her poems are published in journals such as Ecotone, Witness, Michigan Quarterly Review and elsewhere. Transplanted from the shores of Lake Erie, she now lives with her wife in Dayton, Ohio.

IN HER OWN WORDS

No one chooses their perspective, certainly, but in my 50s, I’m still unsettled in mine. I occupy many spaces at once. My writing reflects the duplicitous space someone occupies in a family, a job, or a community, and the void created when they leave. I grew up in, and am growing away from, a blue-collar background near Buffalo, NY. Being the first in my family to go away to college, I hold a blurred space between the working class and those with advanced degrees. I’m not quite home in either space; I find myself code-switching when I’m back in Buffalo, and when I’m home, in Dayton, trying to convince myself I’ve earned the academic currency to live my current life. Blue-collar families, the ways in which society views them, and the ways in which the working class views those who “defect” is my fodder. I explore these injustices, hypocrisies, and camaraderie through poetry. In doing so, I’m also exploring my personal world and what it means to be “home.”

"I MET AIMEE WHILE IN POETRY GRAD SCHOOL AT LESLEY UNIVERSITY. I REMEMBER BEING ASTOUNDED THAT SOMEONE WITH SUCH SHARPNESS OF VOICE, SUCH FINELY-TUNED SKILL, COULD HAVE ONLY RECENTLY BEGUN WRITING.

“THAT WAS YEARS AGO, BUT MY ASTONISHMENT AROUND AIMEE’S WORK HAS HARDLY CHANGED - SHE ENGAGES IN THE REAL WORK OF POETRY, THE SWEAT OF IT. SHE SHOWS UP FULLY TO THE CONVERSATIONS POETRY ALLOWS US TO HAVE, THE CONSCIOUSNESS-CONSIDERING IT CAN DO.

“WHAT’S MORE, HER MARVELOUS COMMUNITY-CENTRISM SHINES THROUGH FROM LINE TO LINE.”

/  july westhale, author of moon moon & UnmadeHEarts: My Sor Juana  /