CMG’s Outset Series Resident for June is Jzl Jmz🎆🎆🎆 Jzl Jmz (FKA jayy dodd)… aka [Lady Tournament] beamed down in Los Angeles ’92 & is reuploading herself to the internet. Her professional career includes positions at Blavity, The Offing, Winter Tangerine & more. She’s been featured in the LA Times, Poetry Magazine, Oprah Magazine, Ms. Magazine, PEN America, Willamette Weekly, The New York Public Library & several anthologies. She’s the author of Mannish Tongues (Platypus Press 2017) & The 2021 Poetry Center Book Prize-winning: The Black Condition ft. Narcissus (Nightboat 2019). She curated Beyond Special Issue (a collective critique on tokenism in (Trans*) poetry) & THEE SPACE Poetry Prize with Shade Literary Arts. She’s editing Bettering American Poetry Vol. 2 (Bettering Books 2017) A Portrait in Blues (Platypus Press 2019) & Her film & performance works have been installed & screened across the country from classrooms to museums. She has been a Lambda Literary Fellow, Precipice Art Grant Recipient through Portland’s Institute of Contemporary Art & Artist-in-Residence at Ori Gallery. She’s an occasional rapper & founder of Tournament.Haus Mutual Aid Fund. Find her talking slick or in another dimension. 🎆🎆🎆

For the Outset Residencyt, Jzl Jmz is curating & archiving sessions around Locality. The three featured artists (Prezent Tongue, Eric Fury, & Snugsworth) are all linked to Portland’s Black history, underground music scene & experimental art practices. Pairing her own poetry & production oeuvre with each co-headliner, Jzl Jmz will record & stream these experiences for her upcoming Local Woman multimedia project.

Prézent Tongue (Aka Vantefrank)  is a BlaQueer Artist based in Portland, Oregon. They are the author of Dormir(2019).

With collections of short poems, paintings, block prints, collages and mixed media art- they evoke a sense of whimsy & surrealism, with overtones of intrigue and longing. True, false and otherworldly. 

Using creation as an act of meditation and a conversation with influences beyond our control. Crafting a visual and lyrical universe for the mind to escape into. In their projects they explore facets of the spirit and all the eyes that it has.