IF PIT BULLS HAD A GOD IT'D BE A PIT BULL thoughtfully uses the subject of the Pit Bull to consider the lived experiences of violent systemic, racialized, and classist injustices. This chapbook barks of love and fear, lyrics of loss and grief, masculinity, pain, dance, camaraderie, and more. Scum Lizard’s bright, colorful artwork in response matches the playful movement and bitten bones scattered throughout the yard of these masterful poems.
About the Riverwards Chapbook Series
The Riverwards Chapbook Series is a unique collaborative exhibition and publishing pilot by The Head & The Hand (H&H). The goal of the Salons was to create a space where local artists and writers could gain access to one another’s work and discover potential collaborators in their own corner of Philadelphia (specifically, the River Wards neighborhoods of Kensington, Fishtown, Port Richmond, and Olde Richmond). A hand-chosen committee of mentors nominated over 35 writers and artists with connections to the River Wards and of those 20 were selected to read and showcase at interdisciplinary Salons hosted at H&H Books over the course of 2023-2024. After each event, artists and writers were invited to consider which of the works on display felt most aligned with their own; in essence, did any feel enough visual-verbal alchemy to want to partner on a chapbook publication?
Of those 20 artists and writers, the answer was a resounding yes for the three final pairings formed after committee members considered all Salon participants’ requests to collaborate. This inaugural run of the Riverwards Arts & Letters Series features collaborations between artist Manuela Guillén and poet Pthalo, artist Nora E Luks and poet Mary Zhou, and artist Rushawn Stanley, or "Scum Lizard," and poet Gabriel Ramirez.
H&H is grateful for series sponsorship provided by the Penn Treaty Special Services District and PECO Powering the Arts.
Gabriel Ramirez
Gabriel Ramirez, author of the chapbook IF PIT BULLS HAD A GOD IT’D BE A PIT BULL (The Head & The Hand Press) and the children’s book We’re Community, is a Queer Afro-Caribbean writer, performer and educator. A 2023 Gregory Djanikian Scholar in Poetry at Adroit Journal and the 2024-2025 CantoMundo Poetry Coalition Fellow. Gabriel has received fellowships from the Palm Beach Poetry Festival, The Conversation Literary Arts Festival, CantoMundo, Miami Book Fair, a graduate fellow at The Watering Hole, and a participant in the Callaloo Writer’s Workshops. Gabriel has performed on Broadway at the New Amsterdam Theatre, United Nations, Lincoln Center, Apollo Theatre, The National Museum of Romanian Literature, and other venues & universities around the nation. Gabriel was featured in Huffington Post, VIBE Magazine, Blavity, Upworthy, The Flama, and Remezcla. You can find their work in various spaces, including YouTube, and in publications like Poetry Magazine, Muzzle Magazine, Adroit Journal, Split This Rock’s The Quarry, BOMB, and others as well as Bettering American Poetry Anthology (Bettering Books 2017) What Saves Us: Poems of Empathy and Outrage in the Age of Trump (Northwestern University Press 2019), The Breakbeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNEXT (Haymarket Press 2020), and Latino Poetry: The Library of America Anthology (Library of America 2024). Learn more about Gabriel Ramirez @RamirezPoet and RamirezPoet.com.
Rushawn Stanley
Rushawn Videl-Gevonte Stanley, or ‘Scum Lizard,’ is an American illustrator and muralist. Stanley’s work is known for its bright, highly saturated color palettes and cartoonish style paired with cerebral content and dark themes.
