finally! my poetry collection, Deifying A Total Darkness, is available for preorder through gumroad.com/upfromsumdirt - use the discount code 'preorder' before the Jan. 15th release date and receive $3 off (united states only. international orders must order from SPD). my heartfelt thanks to the fam, friends, and scoundrels who supported me.
(link is in bio)
some kind words about it:
In Deifying a Total Darkness, upfromsumdirt makes poetry-philosophy-cosmology-physics-literature-history travel to potential pasts, futures, and still-unset presents. Formally dazzling and brilliantly opaque, the poems spar and sing to make art beyond the decloaked ruses of colonialist (ir)rationality. “When’s the last day you weren’t force-fed enlightenment?” With this ravenous, tender, multiply erudite book, we learn to unlearn the naturalized premises of a violently defended hegemonic fragility. What a pleasure to dwell awhile in the spaces opened by these beautiful poems!
—Laura Elrick
Traveling instantly through time, existing inside and outside of history, upfromsumdirt investigates the tragic ironies by which the “moss-grown” scars and still-open wounds of the Atlantic slave trade and colonialism have become, whether we’ll admit it or not, nothing less than “a modern currency”: fundamentally constitutive of modernity and beyond, at the very core of who we all are, the societies we live in and by, the art we make. This omnivorous, completely unforeseen debut draws on numerous historical resources and traditions—for instance, the great pan-Africanist abstract futurist traditions, or histories of science and painting, or inheritances of “long / jarring prose”—and extends and recombines them in new and bracing ways. Reveling in vocabulary and in the possibilities of the English language, infinitely dexterous, bristling with wit, joy, self-awareness and awareness of the conditions and limits of poetic practice and the po-biz, this is an unapologetically maximalist poetry with a simple and deadly serious non-assimilationist “goal: / to not be you."
--Vivek Narayanan
have spent the past several weeks combing through and editing the manuscript for my next collection, Deifying A Total Darkness and i think ive finally got it all straight - and since im also the visual artist AANNDD layout designer for the project, a great deal of time has gone into the look & feel of the cover: the art, the typography, & overall cohesion and it looks like ive also settled on the final design that best reflects the narratives within. we're in contact with a few #letterpress printers so as soon as we lock that down then about everything will be in place for the planned january release. but it's been blissfully hectic these past 3 months as ive also had to create cover art for the poets Bernard Clay, Makalani Bandele, Helen Feibes, and Lennart Lundh, while also currently planning the covers for Chris McCurry and Eduardo Bellestero... so the plate has been, in blessing, completely full. looking forward to seeing all of these wonderful projects come into complete fruition over the next 2-3 months. shout out to Harry Tankoos Books, Old Cove Press, Autumn House Press, Workhorse Publishing, and Accents Publishing for keeping an artist busy!
also, copies still remain of my chapbooks Chiaroscuro Vitae and The Time Unraveller's Travel Journal + Sankofa Paradox from Radical Paper Press, if anyone is interested; $7 a piece.
#upfromsumdirt #poetry #publishing #bookcover #bookdesign #blackart #deifyingatotaldarkness
