J. Mae Barizo

Born in Toronto to Filipino immigrants, J. Mae Barizo is a poet, essayist, and artist who works at the intersection of poetics, media, and performance. She is the author of Tender Machines (Tupelo Press, 2023) and The Cumulus Effect (Four Way Books, 2015).

An advocate for hybrid work, she has collaborated with artists such as Mark Morris, composer Jessie Montgomery, and the American String Quartet. As a librettist, she is the inaugural recipient of OPERA America’s IDEA Opera Residency. Her theater piece ISOLA, written with composer Alyssa Weinberg, had its workshop premiere at Princeton University, and their opera on migration and climate change, DRIFT, is in development with support from an OPERA America Discovery Grant.

Barizo is the recipient of fellowships and awards from Bennington College, the Mellon Foundation, Critical Minded, the Jerome Foundation, and Poets House. Her writing has been published in Poetry, Ploughshares, Esquire,the Los Angeles Review of Books, TheParis Review, Boston Review, and BookForum, among other journals and anthologies. 

Barizo’s poetry often navigates links between desire, geography, and memory. In a 2019 interview with Poets House, Barizo, also a classically trained pianist and violinist, said that “to be immersed in poetry and music is to be surrounded by frequencies and words that twist and swerve, like memory or time.”

Barizo earned an MA in performance from Mannes School of Music and an MFA from Bennington College. She has taught writing at the Pratt Institute, Eugene Lang, and Parsons School of Design.

Barizo is on the MFA faculty at The New School, where she teaches poetry and hybrid studies. She lives in New York City.