Always Becominging (formerly Jay Nieuwland; born 1990) is a New Zealand poet, editor and co-founder of the publishing house We Are Babies. Her 2021 publication ''I Am a Human Being'' won the best first book award (poetry) at the

Ockham New Zealand Book Awards The Ockham New Zealand Book Awards are literary awards presented annually in New Zealand. The awards began in 1996 as the merger of two literary awards events: the New Zealand Book Awards, which ran from 1976 to 1995, and the Goodman Fielder Wa ...

Biography

Becominging was born and raised in

Wellington Wellington is the capital city of New Zealand. It is located at the south-western tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Remutaka Range. Wellington is the third-largest city in New Zealand (second largest in the North Island ...

. She first seriously began writing poetry in high school, after developing a passion for New Zealand hip hop artists such as Frontline and the Breakin Wreckwordz hip-hop collective, eventually realising that she was drawn to the process of writing, instead of hip-hop performance. Becominging studied creative writing at

Whitireia New Zealand Whitireia New Zealand, previously called Whitireia Community Polytechnic and Parumoana Community College (Māori language, Māori: Te Kura Matatini o Whitireia) is a subsidiary of Te Pūkenga – New Zealand Institute of Skills and Technology ...

. Together with American poet Carolyn DeCarlo, Becominging co-founded the independent publishing house We Are Babies. Becominging and DeCarlo worked on a number of projects, including the eBook ''Twilight Zone'' (2013) and ''Bound: an Ode to Falling in Love'' (2014), a fictionalised

chapbook A chapbook is a type of small printed booklet that was a popular medium for street literature throughout early modern Europe. Chapbooks were usually produced cheaply, illustrated with crude woodcuts and printed on a single sheet folded into 8, 1 ...

telling the story of

Kim Kardashian Kimberly Noel Kardashian (born October 21, 1980) is an American media personality, socialite, and businesswoman. She first gained media attention as a friend and stylist of Paris Hilton, but received wider notice after the celebrity sex tape ...

and

Kanye West Ye ( ; born Kanye Omari West ; June 8, 1977) is an American rapper, singer and record producer. One of the most prominent figures in hip-hop, he is known for his varying musical style and polarizing cultural and political commentary. After ...

's relationship. In 2015, We Are Babies released the poetry anthology ''Left: a Book of Words and Pictures'', which featured Becominging as the work's editor. Becominging and DeCarlo also founded the zine/poetry reading collective Food Court, which eventually expanded to become a physical store in Newtown, Wellington. The store shut down in 2022. In the early 2010s, Becominging began writing the poetry collection ''I Am a Human Being''. Halfway through the writing process, Becominging realised that she was genderqueer. ''I Am a Human Being'' was eventually published by Compound Press in 2020, winning the MitoQ Best First Book Award for Poetry at the 2021

, and was longlisted for the Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry. A review in ''

Landfall Landfall is the event of a storm moving over land after being over water. More broadly, and in relation to human travel, it refers to 'the first land that is reached or seen at the end of a journey across the sea or through the air, or the fact ...

'' described it as "a unified artwork and a collection of lyrical bangers", and said the book was "probably the funniest book of poetry published in Aotearoa this year". As of 2022, Becominging is completing a PhD in poetics.

Personal life

Becominging previously identified as genderqueer. In 2021, Becominging came out as a trans woman, and started using she/her pronouns. Becominging met Carolyn DeCarlo online in 2011, on the literary website HTMLGIANT. After the pair developed a long-distance relationship, DeCarlo moved to New Zealand from

Maryland Maryland ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It borders the states of Virginia to its south, West Virginia to its west, Pennsylvania to its north, and Delaware to its east ...

. Becominging and DeCarlo separated in 2022.

Bibliography

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References

External links

Always Becominging
profile at Read NZ Te Pou Muramura {{DEFAULTSORT:Becominging, Always 1990 births New Zealand LGBTQ poets Living people People from the Wellington Region Transgender women writers Transgender poets 21st-century New Zealand poets 21st-century New Zealand women writers 21st-century New Zealand LGBTQ people New Zealand women poets New Zealand transgender women