Clayre Benzadón

Biography

Clayre Benzadón (she / they) is a queer (bi/pan) Sephardic (Mizrahi) Askhenazi poet, educator (adjunct professor) and activist. Her chapbook, Liminal Zenith, was published by SurVision Books in 2019. Her manuscript, Moon as Salted Lemon was recently named an honorable mention for Miami Book Fair’s 2025 Emerging Writer’s Fellowship and was chosen as a winner for Driftwood Press’s Editor’s Pick Poetry Prize. Clayre has been published in SWWIM, The Jet Fuel Review, new words press, and other places.

What is the relationship between Judaism and/or Jewish culture and your poetry?

Judaism serves as the backbone of my work, whether it’s consciously or not. I write a lot about family, especially while attempting to map my Sephardic family history through documentary poetics. I discover the struggles of being queer and Jewish, the gender roles that play into more religious denominations of Judaism, and the intricacies and interrelation of food and culture.

Published Works

Moon as Salted Lemon (Driftwood Press, 2025)

Links to Sample Works

• Poets.org, “Linguistic Rewilding”
• Grist Journal, “Ser La Leche”
• Swwim Everyday, “Moon as Salted Lemon”

Languages of Publication(s) and Poets Translated

Spanish

Subject Matter

Antisemitism, Cultural Identity, Diaspora, Family, Gender, Intergenerational Trauma, Jewish Mysticism, Jewishness, Mythology, Narrative, Sex, Sexuality, Trauma, Feminism, LGBTQ+, Documentary Poetics, Mental Illness, Translation, Disability.