Dec
1
1:00am
Rumpus Poetry Book Club presents Willie Lee Kinard III, author of Orders of Service X Executive Editor & Executive Director of Alice James Books, Carey Salerno
By The Rumpus
Join us for an exclusive Rumpus Poetry Book Club conversation with author Willie Lee Kinard III, executive editor and executive director of Alice James Books, Carey Salerno, and Rumpus Poetry Editor, Brian Spears. They'll discuss Willie Lee Kinard III's ORDERS OF SERVICE and how it fits into Alice James Books's editorial vision.
About the November Poetry Book Club selection:
As a young, Black, queer person in a small town in the South where everyone knows everyone, ORDERS OF SERVICE is a coming-of-age exploration of the everyday fever of fleeting relationships, while capturing the romantic, psychic quotidian of the Bible Belt. This commentary on gospel traditionalism is armed with dreams of helping to reshape lived realities where being your truest self could be shunned or ostracized in deeply religious communities. It ruminates on this Deep South narrative by exploring how the age of social media has created a rich underground counterculture that offsets the surface rituals of grief and shame. The poems illuminate lineages of performance and fellowship for queer descendants of the last Black folks out of the Carolina cotton fields, and features Anansi-like speakers (Anansi is a trickster spider featured in West African and Caribbean folklore) while delving into old-school sensibilities and advice. This gospel-fugue bends language in the backwoods of faith and desire. Pulling figures from the stories of childhood—Icarus, a flying boy wanting to escape; Asterion the Minotaur—the wandering son of someone absent; Medusa, a wronged person portrayed as a mankiller; Cerberus, a beastly guardian intent on being a “good” boy— these poems are punky, preachy, prissy, and pink-collar, and all help create the fever-dream that is ORDERS OF SERVICE.
Willie Lee Kinard III is a Black nonbinary poet, designer, educator & musician forged in Newberry, South Carolina. Holding an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Pittsburgh, their musings include gospel surrealism, Black romance & superstition. A Fellow of The Watering Hole & a Pushcart Prize nominee, their written work appears (or will soon) in Obsidian, Poem-a-Day, Best New Poets, The Rumpus, & elsewhere. Go see ‘bout them at www.williekinard.com
Brian Spears is Senior Poetry Editor at The Rumpus and author of A Witness in Exile (Louisiana Literature Press 2011). He lives in Des Moines.
Carey Salerno is the executive editor & executive director of Alice James Books where she has been serving the literary community since 2008. She is also the author of Tributary (2021), Shelter (2009), and a co-editor of Lit From Inside: 40 Years of Poetry from Alice James Books (2013). She teaches publishing and poetry writing for the University of Maine at Farmington. Salerno teaches and/or lectures on poetry and editing at venues across the nation as well. You may find her essays, poems–and articles and interviews regarding her other professional work–in print and online.
Founded as a feminist press, Alice James Books is committed to collaborating with literary artists of excellence whose voices have been historically marginalized by producing, promoting, and distributing their work which often engages the public on important social issues.
Alice James provides a platform from which to elevate exceptional literary artists and is dedicated to helping its writers achieve purposeful engagement with broad audiences and communities nationwide. We help writers tell their stories and connect with readers. We envision this work making continued contributions that sustain American literary and artistic culture and to growing a more understanding, equitable, and just community through literature.
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