As part of National Poetry Month and Black Poetry Week, The Root is presenting poets who center being black and queer and place white, cis, heteronormativity to a backdrop. Through this lens, these poets explore identity, violence, religion and body image among topics.
Among these featured poets is Civitellian Rickey Laurentiis (CRF 2014). In his first poetry collection, Boy with Thorn, Rickey Laurentiis flipped “it.” The typical white, male, heterosexual themes of Southern Gothic and Georgia O’Keefe were considered through the lens of slavery and queerness. The work was rewarded with the 2014 Cave Canem Poetry Prize (University of Pittsburgh Press). Rickey is the recipient of a 2014 fellowship from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation in Italy, a 2013 Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and a 2012 Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship.
Excerpt from Black Gentleman:
There are eyes, glasses even, but still he can’t see
what the world sees seeing him.
They know an image of him they themselves created.
See the full featured list of poets here.