Karim is a poet and student graduating from the Bard Micro-College at the Brooklyn Public Library, in May. They’ve always been involved in the arts in some capacity including lots of theater work, and now currently poetry. While trying to assimilate into a new culture with its chaotic twists, they find refuge in their poems as a means of speaking about their dilemmas of love, growing pains, isolation, and the various communities they have to navigate in order to survive. A lover of Harlem’s Renaissance acclaimed poet, Claude McKay, who also is black queer and Jamaican, they’re inspired by him in embracing themselves in a way that was restricted while living in Jamaica under fear of scrutiny for being an open member of the LGBT community. They’ll be finishing  their studies at Hampshire College in fall in creative writing, queer studies, and theater.