August 17, 2019
Aaron Coleman, author of Threat Come Close (Four Way Books, 2018), and Alison C. Rollins, author of Library of Small Catastrophes (Copper Canyon Press, 2019) have created words that, as Toi Derricotte wrote, carry the unfinished business of the past forward and, as a result, provided indelible and undeniable insight into the galaxies they possess within themselves.
February 18, 2019
In November 2011, Nikky Finney won the National Book Award for Poetry as a result of her fourth book of poetry Head Off & Split (Northwestern University Press, 2011). In her moving acceptance speech, Finney started with a history lesson in the form of a 1739 South Carolina Slave Code. This slave code forbade teaching slaves how to read and write, and threatened a fine, jail time, and even death “for circulating any incendiary literature.” Finney not only spoke with poise and determination regarding history, but also of her-story: her parents, her beloved press, her fellow finalists, and a pair of her teachers. The speech, like her book, quite rightly, garnered her widespread acclaim and I think of both regularly. These thoughts were especially illumed when I reached out to Northwestern University Press this past year to inquire about Marcus Jackson’s second full-length collection Pardon My Heart.