The Bloodmire Empire of Chiina

Poetress & Author Chiina Bloodmire at Poetry Lounge

Chiina Bloodmire, a petite human with the auric energy of a powerful giant, walked into Big Dog Coffee in Southside and joined me at the table in the front window. Our eyes met, and smiles reflected. “It’s Chiina with two i’s, the better to see you with, and Bloodmire, like vampire, a hybrid witch.” 

We eased into conversation, relating with vignettes of our daily lives. I became aware of Chiina through Millvale’s Poetry Lounge owner and independent publisher, Sean Enright. She and I were highlighted in an Instagram post advertising our upcoming book releases. 

Bloodmire didn’t consider herself a poet until December 2023, even though she’s been writing poetry for over 15 years. “It was in October [2023] that I lost my mind. Nobody knows who I am, nobody knows what I do. Nobody knows nobody knows anything. I broke down. I was not doing what makes me happy every day, which is writing.”

Her work blends mythical fiction and urban literature.

“I write about black ass people in black ass spaces, black scenarios, black magical people being black. All of my characters, everyone is black. You either understand because you're black, or you learn to understand.” 

I nodded and without hesitation, she pointed to my skin. “When I tell people of your complexion there are no white people in my stories, they either say it’s not realistic or not relatable.” 

I asked if she ever wrote white people in to “balance the score”, and we shared between us a morbid laughter. “I did write them [when I was younger],” she confessed. But she was “writing the same overplayed scenarios we see on TV, the slave bullshit.” 

In Bloodmire’s work there may be no white people, but there is also no perpetuation of slavery as acceptable narrative.

Chiina began writing in 2002, when she was 9-years old, learning the craft through text-based role playing similar to the well-known Dungeons and Dragons—a complex interactive character building and storytelling game. Becoming the master of an entire world, she cultivated a gift for developmental editing. In 2006, she created a profile on Gaia Online and birthed a fictional country, with states and cities, that is still active today. For her recent work, she’s reconceptualized the world she built in her childhood. She wrote an entire family of people to life with their own personalities, mannerisms, likes and dislikes. 

Chiina herself is one of the family members. “Those are my babies. We've been writing about them since 2002. There’s six of us. They cook together, eat together, throw parties together. They satisfy their clientele; they throw it to people around them.” She smirks, and laughs with her internal crew. “[We have] my own language, my own traditions, my own culture, my own everything.” 

Bloodmire is disciplined with her facts. In her youth, she penned a scene, set in the 1920s. Four of her characters are isolated on a boat in the ocean for two months. Rediscovering the piece, the scene made her question why they were on the water so long. Realistically, how long would it take an Ocean Liner to cross the distance? Chiina rewrote the scene to satisfy her now 31-year old self. 

Her characters evolve as she herself evolves.

“Whenever I need them to write a story, I call on them as if they’re my ancestors,” she explains.

Chiina practices Tulpamancy, a meditative act which trains the imagination to engage in dialogue with invisible companions called tulpas, or thought-forms. Tulpas share the mind and body of the person who created them, but have autonomous free will and agency. In Tibetan Buddhism and other traditions of mysticism, the tulpa is a spiritual practice requiring intense concentration. 

Bloodmire creates by conscious effort while I lean toward the other end of the spectrum, aiming for unconscious effort. However, Chiina and I agree there are similarities in our writing experiences; the way we “zone out” and channel these inner voices to move their words to the page and identify who is speaking to interpret what they mean. We each have our own tongue with a personal, secret language and it is unveiled in our roles as writers. Poetry offers clues. 

A transplant like me, Bloodmire moved to Pittsburgh from Queens, New York in June 2022. Her breakdown in October 2023 led her to invest in herself and reflect upon her life the way only grief can guide us to.

It was April 2019, before the world knew of Covid, that Chiina’s grandfather passed away suddenly. It didn’t make sense; he had the flu that turned into pneumonia. Doctors said he had a week left and the next day, he died with Chiina as witness. “I was sitting in that room, and the first thing I heard was, ‘if you died tomorrow, would you be proud of yourself?’”

Bloodmire’s eyes filled with tears. I greeted her grief with my own—my aunt died unexpectedly in September 2019. The surprise of death changes a person, but resilience is found inside the pain. We agree we must make the most of living while we have lives to live. Chiina fueled her breakdown with poetry, and has been riding an inspiring wave of creative flow and recognition. On her own in a city unknown, magic took her on a journey.

On February 20, Chiina went to “the wrong right place, wrong right date” looking for an open mic event. Discovering Poetry Lounge was an accident. Her performance garnered the attention of Enright who invited Bloodmire to be featured in YAWP Carnival Poetica (April 19) and two board members of the Pittsburgh Poetry Collective plugged their next open mic on February 21. “I was like, I don’t know what this is. I started memorizing my pieces.”

Bloodmire owns the mic.

From there, she met poet IncoMEplete who brought her into the fold. On March 6, she attended her first Steel City Slam and won first place. On March 20, she slammed again, winning first place. On April 23, she graced the stage at City of Asylum and secured the Grand Slam Champion title. On May 9, she was featured for her championship at Greer Theater. She thanks her newfound poetic family. “The way I’ve been embraced, seen, felt and heard has me knocking down challenges behind closed doors with ease.”

Chiina’s third published work, The Book of Kuu, was released by Poetry Lounge Press on August 20. “Even though she's like, running around, having fun, busying her business,” Bloodmire relays, “she's very serious about what she does.”

Living from the core of one’s artistry is serious work.

Bloodmire has three publications available on Amazon, S.I.N.: Shadow Integration & Nurturing, a guided shadow work journal and workbook for healing, self-love and self-discovery with prompts (July 2023), Hai-Kewchie: A Collection of Haikus Telling The Tale of Punani Bliss (June 2024), and The Book of Kuu. 

Chiina glows in vibrant sisterhood—no longer a stranger among strangers—that spans time and spins gold.

For readers and fans of Bloodmire, you can access more of her work via Patreon and links to her performances can be found on Instagram.