Lillian-Yvonne Bertram’s Poem “We Make Ourselves” was commissioned by the Goodman Theatre, in collaboration with The Poetry Foundation, in relation to their production of Highway Patrol, for their 23/24 season January 2024.

We recommend engaging with this poem after watching Highway Patrol, therefore, the full poem will be available to view in post-show emails. 

Artist Bio

Lillian-Yvonne Bertram is an African American writer, poet, artist, and educator who works at the intersection of computation, AI, race, and gender. They are the author of Travesty Generator (Noemi Press), a book of computational poetry that received the Poetry Society of America’s 2020 Anna Rabinowitz prize for interdisciplinary work and longlisted for the 2020 National Book Award for Poetry. They are the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship. Their other poetry books include How Narrow My Escapes (DIAGRAM/New Michigan), Personal Science (Tupelo Press), a slice from the cake made of air (Red Hen Press), and But a Storm is Blowing From Paradise (Red Hen Press). Their fifth book, Negative Money, is available now. They direct the MFA in creative writing program at the University of Maryland.