A u t h o r : D u r i e l E . H a r r i s C a t e g o r y : P o e t r y . A f r i c a n & A f r i c a n A m e r i c a n S t u d i e s . Print ISBN: 978-1-937658-64-9 Publisher: Nightboat Books

Contents: Author Bio Book Bio Testimonials Target Audience Book Excerpt Downloadable Author & Book Photos Contact Author

Media Kit

Author BioPoet, performer, and sound artist, Duriel E. Harris is author of three poetry collections: Drag (Elixir Press), Amnesiac (Sheep Meadow Press) and No Dictionary of a Living Tongue (2017), winner of the Nightboat Poetry Prize. A MacDowell and Millay Colony fellow, Harris has received grants from the Illinois Arts Council, the Cave Canem Foundation, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. With Scott Rankin, she is co-author of the poetry video Speleology (2011), a jury selection of the 2011 International Literary Film Festival, the 2012 Zebra Poetry Film Festival (Berlin), and the 2012 Visible Verse Festival (Vancouver). Recent compositions appear in BAX, The &Now Awards, Warscapes, and the PEN Poetry Series. Current undertakings include the conceptual work “Blood Labyrinth” and the solo performance project :Thingification:. Harris is editor of Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora, Co-Founder of the Call & Response performance ensemble, and is an associate professor of English in the Graduate Creative Writing Program at Illinois State University.

Duriel E. Harris

NO DICTIONARY OF A LIVING TONGUE is formidable in its explorations of art, citizenship, and life as a body amid the social, political, and electronic networks that define us—hold us together—bind us. The poems here take many forms—prose, lyric, epigram, narrative, dialogue fragment, song, musical score, fairy tale, and dictionary entry. An elegant use of sound coupled with a keen, roving intelligence and fierce commitment to social justice creates a unique and powerful collection of poems.

Book Bio

A u t h o r : D u r i e l E . H a r r i s C a t e g o r y : A f r i c a n A m e r i c a n S t u d i e s . C r e a t i v e W r i t i n g / E n g l i s h . F e m i n i s t L i t e r a t u r e . G e n d e r S t u d i e s / W o m e n ’ s S t u d i e s . Q u e e r S t u d i e s . D i a s p o r i c S t u d i e s Print ISBN: 978-1-937658-64-9 Publisher: Nightboat Books

TESTIMONIALS

Judge’s CitationNo Dictionary of a Living Tongue is formidable in its explorations of art, citizenship, and life as a body amid the social, political, and electronic networks that define us, hold us together, bind us. The poems here take many forms—prose, lyric, epigram, narrative, dialogue fragment, song, musical score, fairy tale, and dictionary entry. An elegant use of sound couples with a keen and roving intelligence and a fierce commitment to social justice to create a unique and powerful collection of poems. Kazim Ali, Nightboat Book Award 2015

“In this necessary new collection, Duriel E. Harris has created a primer on citizenship. NO DICTIONARY OF A LIVING TONGUE is a living archive, collecting the muscles, senses, and narratives of a life. This is a stunning achievement, at once proprioceptive, visceral, destabilizing, and visionary.” Claudia Rankine

“[A]kin to a dictionary made of shadow and glimmer, fluid and flame. This is wondrous, incalculable work from one of contemporary poetry’s supreme alchemists.” Terrance Hayes

“Here is black brilliance doing what it do, relying on nothing but itself to articulate its genius; here is the black experiment of Harris where the poet is the lab, the genius, the rat, the substance, and the boom filling the room at once.” Danez Smith

WHO SHOULD READ

• people who love language• university students & educators• social justice and community builders• philosophers & artists• spoken word audiences• feminist thinkers• everyone interested in creating a better world

Target Audience

BOOK BENEFITS • expands language for contemporary living • educates with literary & music practice • increases social understanding• deepens awareness about world citizenship• extends ability to have difficult conversations • elevates poetry and poetic practice across media

“If You Bring Forth what Is within You”

I used to be a bigot, he professed, pride fanning out between the words, airborne. And to his body: It was you, weak thing! I hate you. His pink mouth leaking sap and the world a forest swarm of dagger moths.

They say pain is weakness

leaving the body. Sputum. Spoiled blood. Tears.And when it rises—pain—in a chorus to meet the open air it is as if a god has been born. Unbound,its spectacular darkness blooms, surges bellowing sulfur, anxious to take possession.note:The title is excerpted from the following saying as recorded in The Gospel of Thomas: If you bring forth what is within

you, what is within you will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.

—Jesus ChristSavoring, the art is not to feed but to taste —to take pleasure in the smallest increments the blade can deliver. Blood Fetish—ELLE MARO GREY

I love her face. I always want to suck it. She likes to kiss, nibble, and tease but I just want to pull her face into my mouth. Her jaw’s soft curve shadows my bite and the plum sweet meat of her ripens through its wax bloom. Its density suggests how else I might indulge myself. Last week I sucked a bruise into the dimple of her left cheek.

Meaty and so full of blood, she is a length of libidinous muscle shrink-wrapped in skin. I trail my canines along her jutting rib cage ridge. So little fat. I scrape bone to mark my territory.

Agreement is implicit. All words are equally dangerous. It is better not to speak.

when accosted from behind, I imagine she turns fear to task, puts her mind to use filing carbon paper lists of next actions. Entering the theatre of our play she has learned to check for all available exits. Finding it to be a sealed box she clenches then unclenches her jaw. I watch her bend and contract. Tightening her core, she tunes the ear, focuses her gaze while I move silence in planks and slabs, loitering outside her field of vision.

Book Excerpt

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