
Janice A. Lowe is the author of Leaving CLE poems of nomadic dispersal (Miami University Press) and the chapbook SWAM (Belladonna* Collaborative.) A musician and poet, Lowe is the composer of the multimedia musical OLIO: A Syncopated Citizenry of Sun-drenched Sable Soliloquies, text by Tyehimba Jess and based on Jess’s Pulitzer Prize-awarded poetry collection. Her poems have been published in journals including Callaloo, Iowa Review, Best American Experimental Poetry, and Interim Poetics. Noted for playing piano while intoning poetry, her work has been recognized by Creative Capital, MacDowell, City Artists Corps, The Rauschenberg Foundation and The Center for Contemporary Writing at University of Pennsylvania. Lowe has performed/recorded with the bands Irreversible Entanglements, Digital Diaspora, Julie Patton’s Rock, Paper, Sisters, Anne Waldman & Fast Speaking Music, BRAHJA, and HAGL. Her musical theater compositions include Lil Budda, text by Stephanie L. Jones, Sit-In at the Five & Dime, words by Marjorie Duffield, and Langston & Zora, book and lyrics by Charles E. Drew Jr. Lowe leads the ensemble NAMAROON, whose album, Leaving CLE Songs of Nomadic Dispersal, has been described by The Black Fantastic as a “killer musical offering” and by Helen Young as a “notable...experimental jazz record.” She has guest taught at Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics and currently teaches Multimedia Composition at Rutgers University. She holds an M.F.A. in Musical Theater Composition from New York University, and is a co-founder of The Dark Room Collective.