Asha Berkes is a letterpress artist, poet, and zine maker in the Puget Sound.

They studied English and Creative Writing at the University of Puget Sound and currently serve as the Programs Director at Write253/ Line Break Press, teaching poetry and letterpress to youth in Tacoma, WA. They have been on the organizing team for the Tacoma Wayzgoose Printmaking Festival since 2023.

Their poetry collection “Lesbo Island” was a finalist in the 2020 Stories Award for Poetry through Not a Cult Media.

Artist statement:

I am interested in beauty. How we obsess over what it says about status, race, gender, or belonging. How it is also the only thing worth living for. How it is cheapened by consumerism, greed, and systems of power. How I can look at an ivy heart dingbat and be brought to my knees by its beauty. I often feel like my poems are lists of nouns. I often feel like every piece of art I make is a letter sealed in wax for someone far away. I obsess over objects and images that are ultimately meaningless, and beautiful still in the container of meaninglessness. I obsess over my body, which is too an ultimately meaningless object, but one I must untangle and deal with. It is all a kind of tchotchke worship- wearing clothes, having sex, looking in the mirror, thinking about my relationship with my mother, taking HRT, decorating & redecorating the apartment, & writing it down.