I’m delighted that two people I greatly admire—Robin D.G. Kelly & LisaGay Hamilton—bring their brilliance to my poem “you can say that again, billie”! My gratitude to them,
@ASALH
,
@pbsbooks
, Elisa New, & the
@PoetryInAmerica
team. 🙏🏽 Check out the conversation on Jan. 26th!
Save the date for January 26 @ 8:00 pm - 9:00 pm EST. We, in partnership with
@ASALH
, are pleased to interview poet
@seminewblack
, historian Robin D.G. Kelly, and actress LisaGay Hamilton, which will be led by
@PoetryInAmerica
Executive Producer and Creator Elisa New.
Time + hard work + great good fortune = a named chair & a promotion. Starting next month, you can introduce me professionally as the Zora Neale Hurston Distinguished Professor of English at Rutgers University. (But all my friends will still call me Evie, of course!) 😉🎉✊🏽💜
Rutgers University’s coalition of Unions are on strike. This is not a drill. We are standing in solidarity—grad students, part-time faculty, & TT faculty—for working conditions that allow all of us to make a living wage & provide our students the education they deserve. ✊🏽💪🏽✌🏽
If you haven’t listened to this exchange recently (or ever!), it’s time to hear it (again). Morrison being fiercely brilliant, describing the world accurately in real time.
Today’s the second day of
#NBAwards
Longlist announcements! We are pleased to share the Longlist for the 2023
#NBAwards
Longlist for Poetry! |
@NewYorker
On Friday I spent an hour laughing & joyfully making plans with my dear friend & mentor, Cheryl Wall. On Saturday, she was in the embrace of the ancestors. I’ve never had words for how much I respect & admire her. I have no words now for how much I miss her & always will. 💙🖤💙
👉🏽 I'm very happy to say that Rutgers English is hiring in 2 fields this year: (1) Latinx literature & (2) Asian American / Comparative Asian literatures. We're excited to bring 2 junior scholars in *together.* Apps due Nov. 1. Link to each posted down-thread. Please RT/share. 👈🏽
THIS is the Louise Glück poem that is seared into my soul. It is a personal anthem—though I don’t know whether she had “me” in mind when she wrote it. Poems are like that, though. Congrats to her & to poetry! 🎉👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽
Louise Gluck’s Nobel Prize for Literature is joyful, marvelous news, reminding us that the inner world of language and emotion—of wonder and fever and bitterness and cleaving and precision—can still be heard, read, known amid all the blunt ignorant tyranny. Be known to oppose it.
The brilliant Robin D.G. Kelley on a wonderful book from early in his career, & how he would write it differently now, given all he’s learned in the decades since. Best mode of scholarship: lifelong learning. ✊🏽✨
I’m beyond grateful to
@Poetry_Society
& this year’s Shelley Award judges,
@MonicaYoun
& Mary Jo Bang, for shining a light on my work. We all know how many excellent & deserving poets are creating today. To be singled out is both humbling & thrilling, at once. Thank you!!! 🙏🏽💜✊🏽
Evie Shockley (
@seminewblack
) has been named the winner of the 2023 Shelley Memorial Award. The Shelley Memorial Award recognizes poetic genius and is bestowed upon one distinguished American poet each year.
Selected by Mary Jo Bang and Monica Youn.
I’m full of gratitude today. For an org (
@nationalbook
) that creates excitement about books on a nat’l scale. For a press (
@weslpress
) that cares about books. For these terrific finalists. For the good fortune that connects *suddenly we* to them all. 🎉
So happy to share this celebratory moment with
@weslpress
, publisher of my last 3 collections! The people there are wonderful to work with—always ready to help me realize the physical book in a way that will do justice to the poetry. 💜🙏🏽
I’m happily sharing a poem from my forthcoming book that was published today in
@NewYorker
. 🙏🏽 to
@Deardarkness
for lifting this poem up! Take a look or a listen when you get a chance—& please share ✨
Join me in pre-celebrating my forthcoming book, *suddenly we,* due out on 3/7/23! My page proofs are in; now I can’t wait for it to enter the world.✨💜 I hope, come spring, you’ll give it word-of-mouth love—“on here” or with your actual mouth! 😉🗣💋
What an amazing evening at the
#NationalBookAwards
ceremony! Congrats to Poetry winner
@craigsperez
& all winners & finalists! 🎉 Double congrats to THE Rita Dove, honored for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters! 💜🎉 And 🫶🏽 to my
@weslpress
editor, Suzanna Tamminen!
Lucille Clifton’s characteristically metaphysical poem makes me wonder if we may be asking the wrong question(s). If so, what should we be asking instead? A poem to ponder.
Rutgers English is searching for 2 TT positions this fall! 1st, asst. prof. in Af Am Lit. & Culture (w/ partial appt. in Africana Studies). Particular needs in Black Feminism &/or Early Af Am Lit, but any area of Af Am literary studies welcome. (1/2)
Literature profs! Do you have promising undergrads, from underrepresented groups, who are or should be considering the Ph.D. in English? Encourage them to apply to the Rutgers English Diversity Institute (REDI)! Application deadline *extended* to Mar. 6.
Tonight I’m thinking about a June Jordan poem I taught this past semester, called “Poem about Police Violence” (1974). I put it alongside Audre Lorde’s “Power” & Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon’s “Poem for Amadou Diallo.” There was a lot to discuss.
Q: “What do you mean, defund the police?”
Let’s direct this question to an expert—such as Angela Davis: theorist, professor, former political prisoner, & (among many other things) prison abolitionist. Allow her to explain.
"Defunding the police is not simply withdrawing funding for law enforcement and doing nothing else. … It is about shifting public funds to new services and new institutions." ~Angela Davis
#DefundThePolice
Anyone interested in a paid internship to learn the fundamentals of literary editing? FYI. Apply! And please share with those who might be looking for just such an opportunity.
Being Poet in Residence at Stella Adler is dreamy!! The students are talented, generous, & love the arts. Poetry is alive & well there, for sure! 💜😍🥰✊🏽
We're thrilled to host Evie Shockley, poet & literary scholar, as poet-in-residence this year. Welcome, Evie! (pictured working with Arts Justice Adler Youth students)
@seminewblack
I’m a bit stunned to find *suddenly we* as 1 of 5 poetry collections on the
@PublishersWkly
Best Books 2023. 😯☺️ Congrats to
@MonicaYoun
,
@jorie_graham
, Vievee Francis, & (posthumously—RIP) Saskia Hamilton, in whose amazing company I’ve been placed. ✨
Let’s thank GA in a way that recognizes their hours on the ground, on the phone, & in the line. I’ll donate today to The New GA Project & Spelman. Georgians, what other in-state orgs doing good work (political, economic, educational, abolitionist, arts) can we boost in gratitude?
bell hooks was a complicated, passionate, & boundary-pushing thinker & writer. I didn't agree with every position she took (e.g., I 💜 Hushpuppy & Beasts of the Southern Wild), but my journey as a Black feminist, early on, ran directly through her work. She taught me so much. 💙
I found out belatedly about the Nov. 4th loss of Naomi Long Madgett, when I was too down to confront it. But I can't let 2020 end without honoring her: a poet contemporary of Gwendolyn Brooks & founder of Lotus Press, a signal, ongoing BAM institution.
What an honor, to help celebrate and promote the mission of NJ Humanities as a featured reader! This may mean I'm *officially* a NJ poet, now. 😉 Join us for the Gala on 9/29! Details at the link. 🎉✍🏽💜
😲 🤩 🥳 We are thrilled to announce that award-winning poet and professor Evie Shockley
@seminewblack
joins the lineup at our 50th Anniversary Gala at
@MorvenMuseum
on Sept 29 at 6pm as a featured “Humanities Moment” reader!
In light of today's news re: H1B visas - and given the resignations at Poetry Foundation - I'm going to take the uncharacteristic step of sharing one of my own poems. I hope it will speak to you.
Ahhhhh!!! June Jordan!!! These 2 poems alone suggest her range, from biting irony to tenderness, from perfect images to mind-blowing metaphysics. Read her lines, read her line breaks, read the spaces between her lines, read yourself reading her… 💜✊🏽✨
I am shocked at people being shocked this evening. The only unpredictable thing happening is the leak; the decision itself was in the cards.
Mood: angry. Mode: active.
Possibly my favorite Lucille Clifton poem. It’s <75 words, but it speaks volumes. Gratitude to Teri Cross-Davis & Poetry Daily for putting it in the air today, when we can think about it alongside the links
#MLK
made between labor & racial injustice. ✍🏽✊🏽
I may be done writing poems until I can get this one out of my system. What has
@YesAurielle
done with/to language here?? What has this poem done to/for my heart?? ⚡️🔥🙏🏽
Scenes from Day Two! (Well, the audio is the best part—but you can catch a glimpse of the heads of folks doing the electric slide!) If you’re a student, alum, or community member of/around any Rutgers campus, come out and support our strike tomorrow! Solidarity is joyful!! ✊🏽💜💪🏽
A great poet gives us a great poem about a great writer & a great photographer. (And I don’t use that term lightly!) Here’s Hayes’s sonnet on Butler & Parks—read it & think. ✊🏽💜
Good news for poetry!
@alexispauline
has been awarded a 2023 Windham Campbell Prize! I’m cheering for her, for
@domorisseau
(winner in Drama), Percival Everett (winner in Fiction), & all the other recipients of this year’s prizes! Congrats!!! 🎉🎉🎉
People: Yusef Komunyakaa broke
@nytimesbooks
By the Book feature—in the best way! I’d forgotten it could be more than self-deprecating humor & evasion. By taking the Q’s seriously, he created something between a poem & a master class. To read & reread. 💫
New book for fans of Bernadette Mayer / NY School women’s poetics / collaborative projects / Winter Solstice / poetry. Thanks to lead-dreamer/editor Becca Klaver, publisher
@BlackLawrence
, & all the poets who I stitched words with one winter day in the Before Times ❄️💜🌌
Black freedom is every Black person waking up & spending the day creating their idea of freedom. Then at night, sleeping, free to dream about something other than freedom, because in the morning we'll wake up & live it again.
#ImagineBlackFreedom
#BlackAFF
Still in mourning, but sharing *this* poem may have a healing effect. I heard
@Danez_Smif
read this at their
@nypl
book launch last month, when I was hopeful & happy. It spoke to me then & still speaks to me now.
Poetry at Bennington welcomes Evie Shockley for a public reading of her poetry on Wednesday, October 18, at 7 PM, Tishman Lecture Hall. Free and open to the public. All are welcome.
#poetry
#benningtoncollege
#EvieShockley
@seminewblack
Do you know about Lillian-Yvonne Bertram? If not, time to fix that! She can do anything in poetry—& she probably has. Lyric, computer-generated, concrete—you name it! This poem slays. (Or does it? You’ll see what I mean . . . ) ⚡️⚡️⚡️
...AND recognize that there are entire fields of profs already “prepared” (credentialed) to do this work (& who’ve been doing it for decades). I encourage folks to thread the needle between developing your anti-racist pedagogy & promoting the courses/majors already on the books.
According to the NYTimes, we’re now 665 votes away from a GA win. Goodnight. And blessings on the poll workers. I’m grateful for their stamina & dedication & integrity. 💜✌🏽
My heart is full of joy for this year’s honorees, especially Afaa Weaver,
@Poet_Major
, & Ama Codjoe—three poets who’ve inspired me in different, important ways again & again over the years. Congrats to them & to all those being recognized!!! 🎉🎉🎉
We are pleased to announce the recipients of the 2023 American Poets Prizes, many of which are among the most prestigious poetry prizes in the United States:
Truly, in 10 years, someone will walk up on me & try to tell me about Ama Codjoe. And I will say, "Please. I *been* known." Even if you can't hear that future moment of me sucking my teeth, you can get yourself familiar with her poetry now. Start here:
Many people who used to work for Clarence Thomas have come forward to confirm that he is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being they’ve ever known in their life.
Natalie Diaz has sadly lost a brother to a car accident. She’s fundraising for her brother’s family, who need the support. Please consider helping them.
Support for Mino Diaz Family
“Changing Our Own Futures: Black Feminist Theory & Criticism,” a symposium in honor of Dr. Cheryl A. Wall — Day 1 is here! If you can’t join us in New Brunswick, you can check out our livestream (starting 12:00 ET). ✨Event details & livestream link at: ✨
Poetry people! Come commune with me virtually through the power of language to connect us, hold us together, clarify our thoughts & emotions, & inspire us to "walk beautifully" (as Sonia Sanchez often says). I'd love to have the honor of your time, for the space of an hour.
Our conference offers free events! First one will take place Sept. 10th. Keynote lecture by Evie Shockley.
Shockley's work embraces both free verse and formal structures, she straddles the divide between traditional and experimental poetics.
Register:
The Rutgers English Diversity Institute (REDI) is accepting apps for our 2022 program. REDI encourages students from underrepresented backgrounds to consider grad studies in literature. Colleagues, pls share w/ strong students. Deadline ext'd to Feb. 28!
This poem is relentless, with its breathtaking imagery & its calling to account. I'm grateful for it - & for my introduction to Zaqtan's work years ago when he & his translator
@FadyJoudah
came to read at my campus. 🔥🙏🏽
@AriaAber
There’s something (in writing) that only you can do. If you can trust in that, it’s your reason to stay with it until you figure out what that thing is.
App deadline for Rutgers English Diversity Institute (REDI) is coming up (Feb. 15)! In an imperfect world, we must still open the English professoriate wide to next gen scholars from underrepresented groups. Profs, pls send your strong undergrads our way!
My love for & gratitude to Kundiman is HUGE!!! 💜💜💜 Excited to share it with all of you, in the company of my beloved collective, Poets at the End of the World! 11/9, 7:00 p.m. ET. Come through! ✊🏽
Join us on 11/9 at 7 PM ET for a reading with Poets at the End of the World, a collective that uses their literary work to fuel community action! Featuring readers Ama Codjoe,
@officialdonika
,
@Nic_Sealey
,
@seminewblack
, and Lyrae Van Clief Stefanon.🌟
Eloquence in action. Truth at the mic. Math doing what math does. “The housing wage in Oakland is $40.88 per hour. That means there is no housing available to working people in this city.”
I cannot say how much and how deeply this poem by
@nikkimwalls
makes me feel. I’ve read and re-read it for weeks. Her linked interview only adds to the goodness. I’ll be smiling up at the Red Wheelbarrow every clear night from now on.
#poetryhappening
This poem is devastating. I haven’t read one that more effectively lodges you in the likely future of our present (besides Alexis Pauline Gumbs’s book-length poem *M Archive*). We may be past warnings & at the point of needing this map of the territory.
I'm honored to have been commissioned by
@POETSorg
to write a poem on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment. Take a look - and act! Big shout-out to
@staceyabrams
&
@fairfightaction
! 💜
John Lewis is still working on our behalf, from beyond the grave. He spent his last days thinking about our future. I hope we can make his commitment our own.
I’m an honorary Brooklyn Poet this week!! 😉 Or, more accurately: I’m honored to be the Poet of the Week at Brooklyn Poets! ☺️ Looking forward to reading there Fri. 11/10, 6:30 PM, with two fabulous poet-friends of mine: Charif Shanahan (
@CharifShan
) & Timothy Donnelly. 💜✊🏽
I don’t know how Victoria Chang is about to have 3 books of poetry in 4 years, but I hope I’ll find out this summer, when we’re together at the Community of Writers workshop!
You know what? Ama Codjoe, that's what. This brilliant poem is from the wish-for-what-you-*really*-want tradition. Don't stop reading the poem too early. In fact, don't stop reading Ama Codjoe's poems, ever. 🔥✊🏽💜
Why do I love contemporary Japanese fiction so much? Discuss.
To be clear: I’m reading it in translation, & it’s only been a few books (so far) over a span of many years, but what I read, I adore. Specific authors: Yoshimoto, Ogawa, &, most recently, Imamura. All women, fwiw.
What if there were an On-The-Road narrative, but on motorcycles, in poetry, & by a black man? Now, it exists: written mostly in the 1970s—but just published—by Ed Roberson! My copy is en route, & I cannot wait to read it!! Meanwhile, here’s a review. ✊🏽🏍
Is it my imagination or is
@nytimesbooks
reviewing more poetry these days? In the same week (this one!), I saw Stephanie Burt reviewed four new collections &
@JoyelleMcS
reviewed *FROM From.* Hope this is an actual trend & not something I’m making up! 🤔
I have a piece up today on the
@POETSorg
Poem-a-Day series. If you feel the color bleeding, too, I hope the poem serves a bit of balm. Many thanks to
@ruthellenkocher
for giving the piece a home. 💜💙
NJ did this good thing: adjunct professors are now eligible for unemployment benefits. I hope this change makes a difference for those who may (unfortunately) need it. Now back to work on ending the “adjunctification” of the profession!
A haunting poem by Reginald Shepherd, whose voice is still deeply missed. 💙💜💙 (The new “self-portrait poems” anthology it appears in looks terrific, btw!)