Tracie Morris. Courtesy Cave Canem.
Tracie Morris is an African-American poet, performer, vocalist, and academic.
Life[]
Morris was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. She earned a Ph.D. in Performance Studies from New York University and an M.F.A. in poetry from Hunter College, City University of New York.
She has taught in several institutions of higher education; she is an associate professor at Pratt Institute). She was the 2007-2008 Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania.[1]
Career[]
Morris emerged as a performer and writer from the Lower East Side poetry scene in the early 1990s. She became known as a local performer in the "slam" scene located in the Nuyorican Poets Cafe in New York City, New York, and eventually made the 1993 Nuyorican Poetry Slam team, the same year she won the Nuyorican Grand Slam. citation] She competed in the 1993 eted in the 1993 National Poetry Slam held that year in San Francisco along with her Nuyorican teammates Maggie Estep, Hal Sirowitz and Regie Cabico.[2]
Soon after, she began touring with other "slam poets" around the country and abroad, including Maggie Estep, Dael Orlandersmith, Mike Tyler and Paul Beatty and performed her work on MTV's Spoken Word: Unplugged.[3] She was also performing with music from the outset of her poetry career—collaborating with musicians she met through the Black Rock Coalition. Morris' work is embraced by slam and performance poets as well as the Language Poets, a contemporary poetic avant-garde. She is featured, for example, on Charles Bernstein's [4] Close Listening radio program and was featured at a 2008 conference on Conceptual Poetics alongside Bernstein, Marjorie Perloff, Craig Dworkin and others.
Morris is now known as a sound artist and specialist in sound poetry[5] and as an occasional theatrical performer. She has studied British acting technique at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, London as well as Laban and Meisner techniques in the United States.[6] Her work was featured in the 2002 Whitney Biennial.[7] In 2008 her poem "Africa(n)" was included on the compilation album Crosstalk: American speech music (Bridge Records; produced by Mendi & Keith Obadike).
Publications[]
- Chap-T-Her Won. TM Ink, 1993.
- Intermission. Soft Skull Press, 1998.
- TDJ: To Do w/ John. Zasterle Press, 2011.
- Rhyme Scheme. Chax Press, 2012.
Audio / video[]
Tracie Morris - Too Black
Tracie Morris reads "Queens"
Poetry Spots Tracie Morris reads "You Startin' Wif Me"
Tracie Morris performs "The Mrs Gets Her Ass Kicked," November 14, 2013 at the Kelly Writers House
Featured recordings with Elliott Sharp[]
- Terraplane: Forgery
- Terraplane: Secret Life
- Radio-Hyper-Yahoo
See also[]
References[]
- Tessa Kale, The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry in Anthologies
- Maureen Mahon, Right to Rock: The Black Rock Coalition and the Cultural Politics of Race
- Gary Lenhart, The Stamp of Class: Reflections on Poetry and Social Class by Gary Lenhart
- Robert O'Meally, Brent Hayes Edwards, & Farah Jasmine Griffin, Uptown Conversation: The new jazz studies
- Ed Morales, Living in Spanglish: The search for Latino identity in America. St. Martin's Press: 2003
- Mark Bly, Production Notebooks Volume 2
- Ralph Lemon & Ann Daly, Geography: Art/race/exile
- Zoe Angelsey, Listen Up!
- Tristan Taormino, Karen Green, & Ann Magnuson, Girls Guide to Taking Over the World: Writings from the girl zine revolution
- Gary Mex Glazner, Poetry Slam: The competitive art of performance poetry
- We Who Love to Be Astonished: Experimental Women’s Writing and Performance Poetics (edited by Laura Hinton & Cynthia Hogue).
Notes[]
- ↑ [1]
- ↑ Aptowicz, Cristin O'Keefe. (2008). Words in Your Face: A Guided Tour Through Twenty Years of the New York City Poetry Slam. New York City: Soft Skull Press. "Chapter 14: First and Always; Graduates from the NYC Poetry Slam's First Wave" ISBN 1-933368-82-9.
- ↑ http://www.tv.com/mtv-unplugged/show/3400/episode_guide.html&printable=1 | MTV's Unplugged series Episode Guide
- ↑ http://www.writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Morris.html
- ↑ [2]
- ↑ [3]
- ↑ http://www.whitney.org/2002biennial/artists.html | 2002 Whitney Biennial List of Artists
External links[]
- Audio / video
- Books
- Tracie Morris at Amazon.com
- About
- Tracie Morris at Cave Canem
- Tracie Morris at the Poetry Foundation
- Tracie Morris Official website
- A steamy mix of poetry, afrocentric themes and love, New York Times, 1999
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