Evan: “Loving You From a Foreign Country” merges culture, history, and physical distances to answer the question America has made of queer bodies. Whether they deserve significance, love, or breath. Here is a story you think can be understood. Here is a story that cannot be entered, only felt.

Evan: The heart of the piece came alive when the title settled. As a poet who prefers shorter titles, “Loving You From a Foreign Country” marked a shift in my expression. It was precise and explored a topic I never previously thought to examine. So much of poetry is about either diaspora or queerness, but rarely do we acknowledge the intersection of both. As a result, the title breathed new life into the piece, calling upon the intersection of English and Mandarin. 

Evan: I do not want the audience to understand. I want there to be confusion; to be an invitation for revisitation. Alongside the audience’s wandering thoughts should be a lingering silence that acknowledges distance, yearning, and shared stories. The moment should feel tender and fragile, as if a soft language had just been spoken and any other word could shatter it. 

Naila: I was surprised by how challenging this process was for me. I do not have any particular facility with music, technical or otherwise. And Barbara skillfully  filtered all of her ideas and thoughts through her composing expertise. I was often at a loss for how to respond in a way that might be helpful or supportive of the process. I was also stumped at first to even begin writing, spending a lot of time in my head, wondering how exactly one goes about writing a poem that will become a choral text. Elizabeth, my mentor, was incredibly helpful in getting me to simply start writing and let go of the rest. Then, in the editing process, she worked with me to help shorten my poem’s overall length, reminding me that shorter phrases and fewer syllables are easier for a choir to sing. And I trusted Barbara to take my words and give them the compositional home they called for.

Barbara: I was surprised by how much we were able to achieve in a single meeting together. Being in a room together with a piano, analyzing the text together, and translating the text and subtext into music notes was extremely productive.

Naila: I think these times and where we are headed call for a more embodied way of listening, visioning and problem-solving than the intellect can grasp. The relentless pursuit of growth and progress and the value we place on hyper-individualism have severed our relational ways of being, with each other and the more-than-human world.  How can we repair and restore our ruptured connection with the living body of the Earth, of which we are a part? I believe our future greatly depends on surrendering our human supremacy to return to our original intimacy with the living Earth.

Naila: I am so enchanted by the natural world, and my piece speaks to that. I hope the audience feels that sense of wonder and reverence … and that maybe this piece also allows them to take some slow, deep breaths, to — even if it’s for a moment — inhabit a different pace than the frenzy and overwhelm that dominates so many of our days.

Barbara: I hope that the audience leaves the piece with a similar understanding and appreciation of the poetry that comes from several readings - That the depth found in the repeated reading of the words can be conveyed in a single listen to this musical interpretation.

Barbara: While in the writing room with Naila, I found myself particularly drawn to the combination of, "Go slow here, let small steps carry you" in combination with major add2 chords. This led to the unexpected integration of add2 chords, major and minor, throughout the piece, culminating a final cadence that plays on this expectation. I can only hope this affects the listener as it does me.

Amy Beth: Certain sounds are easier to sing than others. Initially, I tried to rely on beautiful sounds, but I found it was important to include words that are less felicitous to sing. I was really excited by the way Leigha handles the word “necessary” to create almost a hiss. She respects the poem and uses sound to relate to the themes of “What Now?”

Leigha: I was delighted to learn how familiar Amy Beth was with choral music, and how conscientious she was about the sounds of the words that she chose from the declaration.  Her awareness of structure and form in her poetry relates well to how I think about musical form.

Leigha: After the repetition of the word necessary, the text returns to the opening words: "we hold."  To  me, this juxtaposition implies that it's "necessary [that] we hold..."  For this instance of the words "we hold," I chose the warmest version of the harmony, and my mentor Erin encouraged me to add some lower notes in the basses.  Of all of the things that "we hold" could mean in this poem, this instance represents to me the warmth and care that people can strive to have for one another.

Amy Beth: I chose the name for this festival, “What Now?” as the title of my piece because it is an excellent question and it brings me into a larger conversation. It's also what I asked myself when I learned that my composer, Leigha Amick, hoped to write a piece that engaged with the Declaration of Independence. I wasn't sure if I had the fortitude to foreground that document during this time in our country's history, but I'm so glad she gave me a gentle nudge. 

Leigha: I was interested in reflecting on what the Declaration of Independence means to us in 2026, and which of its ideas have the potential to unite us rather than divide us.  Amy Beth was gracious to explore the Declaration as source material for her poem.  She teased out words and reconstructed them in a way that made me consider each word with new insight.  I was particularly intrigued by how she treated "we hold these to be."  Each repetition of a portion of the phrase invites a different angle of meaning, and I attempted to depict the meanings that I interpreted in the poem through the use of tension and release in the music.

Amy Beth: It feels apt to sing this piece in Philadelphia where we can face our imperfect history. Here we can visit Independence Hall where the Declaration was signed but we can also cross the street to visit the partially restored exhibit "Freedom and Slavery in the Making of a New Nation" at the President's House, which was taken down last year by executive order. The fight is ongoing to fully restore this exhibit at the ruins of the house where President George Washington lived with the African people he enslaved. Only if we face up to our historical failings with a clear eye can we grow our imagination to create a vision of a better future.

Amy Beth: I used words from the Declaration in the order in which they appear with a single exception. In one spot, I changed "course of human" to “of course human”. In this time when our government and institutions are dehumanizing so many of us, I hope the words “of course human” set to Amick’s thoughtful music and premiered by the venerable Mendelssohn chorus will ring in the minds of the audience.

Octavia: What surprised me most was how each collaborator opened the work in different ways. Ted Babcock, the composer, deepened its emotional and sonic life, while my poet mentor, Kirwyn Sutherland, sharpened its language and clarity. Together, they helped me see the piece more fully than I could on my own.

Ted: How easy it was! Octavia is a great sport and very flexible. She was truly a joy to work with!

Ted: There were so many! One that really stuck out to me was the phrase 'the electric bloom is our lighthouse.' Growing up in New England, I was surrounded by lighthouses, and they carry such symbolic weight for me as points of origin and departure. 

Octavia: Any honest concern with our nation’s past inevitably extends to its present realities and the future we are shaping. My poem, Electric Bloom, honors the foundational ideals we often regard as central to our national identity: liberty, justice, equality and so on. But it also insists that we confront the violence, exclusion, and plunder that were woven into the founding of this country. While the Declaration of Independence proclaimed these great ideals, it deliberately excluded Indigenous peoples, enslaved Africans, women, poor people and others. The poem confronts that truth while also honoring how those same communities have used the language of the Declaration of Independence and later the Constitution to claim their place in American life. In a moment when immigrant communities face renewed hostility, the poem returns to these founding words to ask not only who we have been, but who we are still becoming. It is both a reckoning and a reaffirmation.

Ted: You know, this work is being presented in such a time of friction and apathy in our country. I hope in my own small way this piece helps dislodge some of that sense of futility for someone. The fact that the text actually uses fragments of the declaration of independence I think underlines how art can take the longview on huge topics like the promises a nation makes to its people.

Octavia: I hope they leave feeling unsettled but awakened. I want them to recognize that to care about this country’s past is to take responsibility for its present and its future. I want them to sit with both the harm and the possibility, and to feel called to be part of shaping a more honest and just “we.”