Poetry
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Tradition Left These
By Royce K. Freeman Critique of tradition happens in the tongue and cheek. It happens while the shadows tend to a bruised back,...
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Bait Car
By Tria Andrews Maybe to you crime will always be black and white. Maybe because you’ve worked hard and have something to show for that work....
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In Praise of the Never Straight: Cheryl Clarke
In 1982, Black Lesbian Feminist Poet and Scholar Cheryl Clarke wrote a letter to her fellow Black Feminist Poet June Jordan: “No there is nothing...
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We Have Always Known: Embodying Community Accountability
A review of Community Accountability: Emerging Movements to Transform Violence, a special issue of Social Justice: A Journal of Crime, Conflict & World Order (Vol 37, No. 4,...
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Culture Feature: Tarfia Faizullah
By Tarfia Faizullah Aubade: Doctor’s Appointment In the longspun morning I go to return my body to itself to open it wide to hands...
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Pot Roast and Imperial Justifications
By Amal Rana “how come you don’t cover your hair?” my breath punches out of me in one big gasp as I pretend not to hear...
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US Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey (Lesson 3 of 3): On Embodiment at the End of the World
From the series introduction: When I first met Natasha Trethewey she was a visiting fellow at Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies and she said...
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3 Lessons from Natasha Trethewey: (Lesson 2) Making the Archive You Need
(Read Lesson 1 here.) From the series intro: When I first met Natasha Trethewey she was a visiting fellow at Duke University’s Center for Documentary...
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Women Writers Find Inspiration, Mandate to Create, at VORTEXT Retreat
By Kelsye Nelson The first ever VORTEXT event, Hedgebrook’s weekend retreat for women writers, began with Bastard out of Carolina author Dorothy Allison growling from...
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Part 1: Natasha Trethewey, Time Travel, and Telekinesis
This is part one of a three-part series celebrating the crucial lessons of the poetic body of work of United States Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey....
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3 Lessons from U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey (A 3 Part Series Coming Soon!)
Series Introduction: I am dancing and screaming with joy even more often than usual because Natasha Trethewey is our next US Poet Laureate! For those...
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An Official Dad
I grew up a child of divorced parents. My father was gone most of the time, and my mom did everything for me. She was...
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Three Poems
By Anisha Dutt You & Me Body, stamped, ornate and pure. My body, your body. Sealed. Beliefs erect dry rivers. Words spark fire, smoldering...
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"Most Affectionately Ever Yours": Slavery, Literacy and Black Women's Friendships
By Tara Bynum and Alexis Pauline Gumbs From at least 1772 to 1779 Phillis Wheatley, the “first” published African American poet wrote letters to another...
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Diaspora (for a friend)
You inspire me in too many directions. I am laughing onto pillows, gurgling spit into screen. Visions mangled between eyes, quicktongued foreign gazes,...
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movement ii
Trace an out line of bodies in places other than center dis/lodged from we. use chalk: it...
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Worry and anxiety have worn me down to the bone
There was no rug on the floor and the old lady from downstairs would crawl up on her hands through the wood and show up...
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Taliban Poetry Collection Sparks Controversy
Poetry of the Taliban, a soon-to-be-released collection of poetry written by Taliban fighters, faced a storm of criticism this past week. The book’s editors —...