Dark~Sky Society is my second book (New Issues Press, 2014), selected for publication as runner-up for the New Issues poetry prize. Poems in this book explore my experiences growing up in then-majority-black Washington DC, moving back and forth between white dinner tables and black, each in different worlds, and where the edifices of whiteness were literally monumentalized all around me.

An important part of creating Dark~Sky Society was the realization that the form that a poem takes can also be a political act. Particularly when exploring events from the past that have been handed down in false narratives, I found that description and elegy are in some ways the tools of bystanders. I include here some sections from "Emacipation Tests," which use visual poetry to try to disrupt, as well as other more traditional lyric forms for poems that are more elegiac.

Poems from this book were published in 5am, Agni, American Letters & Commentary, American Poetry Review, Blackbird, Copper Nickel, Elective Affinities, Harvard Review, Ploughshares, POETRY, The Baffler, Tidal Basin Review, and Tuesday; An Art Project. Reviews for the book appeared in American Poetry Review, American Microreviews, Field, Library Journal, Pleiades, Ploughshares, Princeton Alumni Journal, Post No Ills, Jam Tarts, and I was interviewed on WJHU and WYPR.

In one document, you can find excerpts from the book; in another, links to poems online as well as reviews. I also include a recording of me reading one of the poems, "View of the Capitol from St. Elizabeth's."

Bird in the Head is my first book of poetry. It won the Center for Book Arts chapbook prize, selected by National Book Award-winner Jean Valentine and was published in 2005. The poems explore  growing up with my father who, because of a brain injury, could only communicate without words.

In Bird in the Head I wanted to show experiences of silence and nonverbal connection might be expressed in verbal language. To do that I explored brief poetic forms, particularly the lineages of Chinese, Korean, and Japanese poetries. The poems are quiet, intense, and the book's use of bright page-space, as well as its length, are key to its strategy.

Poems from Bird in the Head appeared in Beltway, Many Mountains Moving, Old Red Kimono, POETRY, Poetry Kanto, and ReVision. It was reviewed in the Kenyon Review and the Boston Phoenix.

I have attached a document with excerpts from the book, and another with links to poems and reviews that appear online. Also attached is an image of the beautiful letterpress object that  Barbara Henry and the others at Center for Book Arts created.

I compose poems with attention to sound and performance as well as their presentation on the page. In some cases the poems live only in performance or recording, often along with other poets or musicians. I was fortunate to have been invited by the editors of ythmn to compose a response, along with three other poets, to an initial "call" poem by Fred Moten; to live-improvise in performance with the musician Paul Rucker; and to compose and perform a number of pieces with the jazz poetry band, Heroes are Gang Leaders, some of which can be found on two of their albums.

In this section I include the poem in ythmn, two poems I composed or featured on with Heroes are Gang Leaders, and my most recent sound poem, "Help Wanted," whose page version is in my next book.

In the course of writing my second book, Dark~Sky Society, I started asking questions about the ways that artists can make work that is not just “about” racism but disruptive of it, and which opens up new possibilities. In 2011 I was invited by the Best American Poetry to guest blog; I talked about my experiences, the way that rewriting on the page reflected rewriting----and rewiring---in my life as a member of the aggressor- or perpetrator-group. I went on to write a number of essays and am grateful to also have been asked to speak or be in dialogue with others about decolonial art practices.

Reviewing my work, the cultural critic Greg Tate has said: "Consider her [work] coiled and sprung; and, to paraphrase an exalted homegrown colloquialism, 'busted loose'." 

In one document I've attached the essay, "The Gentle Art of Making Enemies," which was published in A Sense of Regard: Essays about Poetry and Race. Another document has links to several essays and blog posts, which you can read online. I've also included some posters from conferences and dialogues on decolonial poetics that I've particpated in.

My art practice draws from many apprenticeships, which span different aesthetic traditions and forms. I believe in the ways that poetry can travel, between people, between different times and spaces, and between different styles and traditions. As part of that I have co-organized or curated a number of events that focus on bringing together different poetries and communities. Many of our communities of poets are divided, first by the power dynamics of race, culture, and class, and then by aesthetics which often only disguise, not disrupt these inflections.

It's been an honor to collaborate with many other poets and organizers to make spaces where we can learn and build, imagining a world where the spectrum of different lyrical bodies, as well as different physical bodies, are free and safe and understood.

In this part of the portfolio you can see posters from some events I've co-curated over the years.