Trey Rhone says one of his ongoing inspirations for poetry comes from pop culture. One of his published poems, “I Want to Shoot the Shit with Kurt Cobain Before We Pull the Trigger,” expresses a desire to connect with Kurt Cobain while also exploring what suicidal ideation can look like.

“I feel like pop culture is something that sticks with us because, one of my professors said that we always have our obsessions, and that's what we bring into our writings, our obsessions, and you’ll constantly write about that for the rest of your life,” Rhone said. “And so music and pop culture is just really one of those obsessions for me, so that's why I wrote about Kurt Cobain.”

He is a poet and educator who came from Georgia to South Florida to attend the MFA program at Florida International University, which he graduated from in 2023. He completed his bachelor’s at Georgia Southern University.

Rhone was originally an English major in undergrad, but after winning a prize for $500 for a poetry competition and encouragement from one of his mentors, he became a writing major.

Rhone said that throughout undergrad, he wrote a lot of autobiographical works centered around his identity of being queer and black.

“And my writing just kept on changing. My topics didn't really change, I think it just became more queer focused,” Rhone said. “And then it became more central because I noticed that you can write about the body, you can write about sex, you can write about whatever, and it will still be accepted in the poetry world.”

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