A Poetic Quest

Once again, I feel very honored to be in the company of a group of amazing writers (many of whom I've admired for a long time) in the current issue of MiPOesias Magazine, Quest, guest edited by the wonderful writer Evie Shockley (her a half-red sea is a poetic must have, btw). As an extra bonus, you get to hear many of the poets (myself included -- thanks Brian!) reading their work as well. Here's the line up:

Tara Betts, Derrick Weston Brown, Christian Campbell, L. Teresa Church,
Kyle Dargan,
Camille Dungy,
Cherryl Floyd-Miller,
Tonya Foster,
Aracelis Girmay,
C.S. Giscombe,
Duriel Harris,
Reginald Harris,
kim d. hunter,
Geoffrey Jacques,
Brandon D. Johnson,
A. Van Jordan,
Doug Kearney,
Raina León,
Carl Martin,
Lenard D. Moore,
Opal Moore,
Thylias Moss,
Marilyn Nelson, Mendi Lewis Obadike, G. E. Patterson, Meghan Punschke, Ed Roberson, Reginald Shepherd, giovanni singleton, Chris Stackhouse, Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, Treasure Williams, and Tyrone Williams

What Evie has done here, in part, strikes my eye and ear as a continuation of the work done at the Marjorie Cook Conference on Diversity in African American Poetry held at Miami University in September 2003, and collected in the (also must have) anthology Rainbow Darkness: an attempt to expand our notion of what we talk about when we talk about 'black poetry'. As she says in her editor's note to the issue, "i’ve gathered samples of the outrageous, the deep-blue, the needle-tipped, and the butter, the kinds of work i know and love, created by daring, caring, wayfaring poets."

We as a community contain multitudes, and we as individual writers often explore a variety of styles and modes as well. Thanks, Evie, for this chance to show another side to our work and ourselves.

(FYI: the lovely collage -- Wanderlust Wonderland -- is by poet/artist Krista Franklin)