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Poet | hanraschka.com
Han Raschka is a born-and-raised Wisconsinite by way of Stevens Point. They are currently hunkered up in the Driftless Region. They attend the UW-Madison, majoring in creative writing with a focus in poetry.
Han found a passion for poetics during the 2020 Covid-19 lockdown, taking online workshops through the San Francisco Creative Writing Institute and Brooklyn Poets to develop their craft. Within the confines of Zoom calls and remote workshops, they assembled a body of work that eventually comprised their first collection, Splinters (Collapse Press). Splinters was a practice in exorcism rooted in Midwest cultural identity and space within the framework of personal trauma. Han continued this theme in their chapbook, Enamel (Bottlecap Press) and firmly established themselves as a practicing (always practicing!) poet.
Han’s poetry frequently utilizes religious iconography, embodied language, and the queer experience in order to construct a deeply intimate exploration of their Wisconsin identity. They spent their childhood in Central Wisconsin, running around in the woods and building a cultural repository in a brain their mother affectionately refers to as “the sponge.” Han came of age in a multifaceted transitional period: Flip phones gave way to Blackberries and then iPhones; Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’s repeal and the legalization of gay marriage occurred in their middle and high school years; and the Wild West known as social media grew at an exponential rate. They consider this backdrop an integral part of their poetics and their personal development as a queer Midwesterner.
Han has taught community workshops, curated readings, been a featured reader at poetry events, and is a stalwart attendee of their favorite virtual open mic, The Friday Collapse. Their favorite way to explore poetics is through this lens of community practice and joy, and emphasizes the intentional process of community building as a key focus of their writing pedagogy. Their poetry has won awards, earned them fellowships and scholarships, and has been published in various journals and anthologies.
Their writing currently centers on an autobiographical exploration of internet culture, public/personal digital historiographies, and the experience of growing up within and alongside the Web. Their central question: What is the line between public and private persona, and how do we experience these personas in the context of both the internet and our personal lives?
Han feels that at their core, they are still off running in the woods. If you’d like to join them, you can find their work at hanraschka.com.
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2025 Queer Arts Directory
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