Poetry Path: Tommy Pico

Tommy Pico is the author of Feed (Tin House Books, 2019), Junk (Tin House Books, 2018), a finalist for the 2019 Lambda Literary Award, Nature Poem (Tin House Books, 2017), winner of a 2018 American Book Award and a finalist for the 2018 Lambda Literary Award, and IRL (Birds, LLC, 2016), winner of the Brooklyn Library Literary Prize and a finalist for the 2018 Kate Tufts Discovery Award. Among other honors, he was a 2013 Lambda Literary fellow, 2017 NYSCA/NYRA Fellow, and a recipient of the 2017 Friends of Literature Prize and a 2018 Whiting Award. Pico co-runs the reading series Poets with Attitude and is a poetry editor at Catapult Magazine. He is from the Viejas Indian reservation of the Kumeyaay Nation and currently lives in Los Angeles and Brooklyn.

Photo by Daniel Terna

Tommy Pico, excerpt from Nature Poem. Copyright © 2017 by Tommy Pico. Reprinted by permission of Tin House Books.

The Poetry Path is made possible through a partnership with Battery Park City Authority, partners in design and fabrication of the Poetry Path, with additional support from our Outreach Partner, Goldman Sachs. Special thanks to the Arthur F. and Alice E. Adams Foundation for funding the Poetry Path planning process, and to the Marcia Brady Tucker Foundation for supporting Poetry Path educational initiatives for youth and children.