theblackbottom

Executive Director, Massachusetts Poetry Festival. Assistant Professor, Salem State University. Author of Underlife (CavanKerry Press 2009) and the forthcoming Misery Islands (CavanKerry Press 2014)! Trying to celebrate the extraordinay in the ordinary every day.
Source: Verse Daily
Drinking
A coworker says,
We’re thinking about doing a happy hour.
Wanna join us?
And you recall the night you found your father
slumped over [...]

Ciara Darnise Miller was born and raised on the West Side of Chicago. After becoming a Louder than a Bomb poetry slam champion, she performed at various high schools and colleges throughout the United States, including: Lane Tech, North Side Prep, Berkeley High, Chicago Academy of the Arts, MaryMount Manhattan College, Milliken University, and [...]

Kelli Stevens Kane is a poet, playwright, and oral historian whose work–both on the page and in performance–unearths surprises at the crossroads of human vulnerability and possibility.
Source: World Riot
(63)
these dreams I will carry with me
like waves in the air above heat or gasoline
awake in this flaunted house
all kinds of spirit guests walk through
and they’ll [...]

Ruth Ellen Kocher won the Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award for her first book of poems, Desdemona’s Fire (Lotus Press, 1999). When the Moon Knows You’re Wandering (New Issues Press, 2001), her second volume, received the Green Rose Prize in Poetry. Her most recent collection, One Girl Babylon, called “tender, tough poems” by Al Young, [...]

Ernesto Mercer is a poet-multidisciplinary artist, teaching-artist and an independent scholar. His work incorporates many of the written and verbal arts from around the Atlantic African-American diasporas. For over 20 years he has created art works and performed across the US and beyond. A Cave Canem Alumni Fellow, since 2008 his performance works have been [...]

Source: Wikepedia
Margaret Walker was born to Sigismund C. Walker, a Methodist minister, and Marion Dozier Walker, who helped their daughter by teaching her philosophy and poetry as a child. Her family moved to New Orleans when Walker was a young girl. She attended school there, including several years of college, before she moved north. [...]

Marcus Jackson was born and raised in Toledo, Ohio.  After earning his BA at the University of Toledo, he continued his poetry studies in NYU’s graduate creative writing program and as a Cavem Canem fellow.
His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Harvard Review, and The Cincinnati Review, among many other [...]

Antoinette Brim is the author of Psalm of the Sunflower (Aquarius Press/Willow Books, 2009). Her poetry has appeared in various journals and magazines including Reverie Midwest African American Literature, The November 3rd Club, Tidal Basin Review and anthologies including 44 on 44: Forty-Four African American Writers on the 44th President of the United States, [...]

Source: sonya-renee.com
Award winning Poet, Activist and Transformational leader Sonya Renee believes in the life shifting power of art. Sonya is a National and International poetry slam champion who has shared her work and on stages across the US, New Zealand, Australia, England, Scotland, Sweden, Canada and the Netherlands in prisons, treatment facilities, homeless shelters, universities, [...]

Born and raised in Nashville, Tennessee, Evie Shockley received her BA from Northwestern University. After studying Law at the University of Michigan, she earned her PhD in African Literature from Duke University.
Shockley’s first book, The Gorgon Goddess, was published by Carolina Wren Press in 2001. Since then she has published three books: [...]