Tara J Betts's Books
Feb.01.2008
MiPoesias print companion publication guest edited by Barbara Jane Reyes. Including poems by Tara Betts, Brian Dean Bollman, Sasha Pimentel Chacon, Chingin Chen, Linh Dinh, Sarah Gambito, Jessica Hagedorn, Jaime Jacinto, Nathaniel Mackey, Craig Santos Perez, Matthew Shenoda, Jennifer K. Sweeney, Truong Tran, Dillon Westbrook, and Debbie Yee.
Apr.01.2007
A collection of poetry, fiction and creative non-fiction that records HIV/AIDS in a way that humanizes its existence and celebrates the living. Displaying writings themed to the Black Diaspora, this critical and creative body of work defines the dialogue that will be prevalent well into the 21st century. This volume contains four sections: “Stop walking for a minute, hear me,”...
Apr.01.2007
In the tradition of The Spoken Word Revolution, Redux brings more of the gripping, moving, innovative, often hilarious poetry in the oral tradition. This redefining collection gathers multiple forms of “spoken word” under the same motley tent—slam, hip-hop, musical interpretations, and youth movements among them. The resulting brew is both satisfying and world-expanding. One audio...
Nov.01.2006
Hurricane Blues is a unique artifact of American history: an anthology of original poems about the two most infamous hurricanes of 2005. Many of these poems are eyewitness accounts--written by both distinguished and emerging poets, all of whom were moved by the destruction of a legendary American city and the roughly 300-mile radius within Katrina's wrath.
This collection not only...
Jan.10.2006
Cave Canem has for the past ten years dedicated itself to the discovery and cultivation of new voices in African American poetry. Founded in 1996 by prizewinning poets Toi Derricotte and Cornelius Eady, Cave Canem began as a weeklong summer workshop/retreat and has now expanded to include regional workshops, poetry readings, a series of public conversations between major poets and...
Mar.05.2005
Poetry began as an oral tradition and has circled back to its "live" roots in a movement known as the spoken-word revolution. Thanks to the innovators profiled in this delineating anthology, poetry is now performed, often competitively and quite dramatically, in front of large and enthusiastic audiences in bars and coffeehouses all over the world. Editor Eleveld, a high-...
Aug.15.2002
A broad range of black family life is offered in this collection of essays, some reprinted and others original, from a variety of writers and poets, including Gwendolyn Brooks, Alice Walker, Edwige Danticat, and Marilyn Nelson. Henry Louis Gates writes about the secret eccentricities of his mother's family; Trent Masiki laments his Ugandan father's alienation from the family, which...
Oct.23.2001
There's no doubt that the crowd-rousing competition of poetry slams has injected an often marginalized literary genre with new energy and brought it out of the academy and into people's lives, where it belongs, but much of the impact of spoken-word poetry is rooted in its bravura performance, not its often banal writing. Coeditor Medina acknowledges this flaw and then triumphantly...
It's all here, all the nuances of body and voice, as bold and sensitive poetic attitude. How flow became form then flow again, the creative-growth-process of living writing line breath before line break, a risk in every room. Tara Betts makes silence plea then whips some crazy and some natural on the confessional. Often sassy, often black-a-demic, her non-discriminating eye is...
A very special issue of all African American women writers guest edited by writer Honorée Fanonne Jeffers,PMS 8 features such figures as Elizabeth Alexander, Lucille Clifton, Edwidge Danticat, Nikky Finney, Nikki Giovanni, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Tayari Jones, Allison Joseph, Evie Shockley, Patricia Smith, and an interview by Remica L. Bingham with Pulitzer Prize winner Natasha...
About Tara
Tara Betts is the author of the poetry collection Arc and Hue on Aquarius Press' Willow Books imprint. Tara is a lecturer in creative writing at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ. A Cave Canem graduate and VONA alum, Tara received her MFA from New...
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