This week, recommending Dawn Lundy Martin‘s Life in a Box Is a Pretty Life, from Nightboat Books. Dawn earned a BA from the University of Connecticut, an MA in creative writing from San Francisco State University, and a PhD in English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Martin’s first full-length collection, A Gathering of Matter / A Matter of Gathering(University of Georgia Press, 2007), was selected by Carl Phillips for the 2007 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. Her second collection,Discipline, won the 2009 Nightboat Books Poetry Prize, chosen by Fanny Howe(Nightboat Books, 2011). Her most recent collection is Life in a Box Is a Pretty Life(Nightboat Books, 2014).
In 2004, she co-edited, alongside Vivien Labaton, The Fire This Time: Young Activists and the New Feminism (Anchor Books, 2004), a collection of essays on modern theories of activism in America. She also wrote the Afterword, titled “What, Then, is Freedom,” to Harriet Ann Jacobs’ 19th century slave narrative, Incidents of a Slave Girl (Signet Classics, 2010).
Martin is co-founder of the Third Wave Foundation in New York, a national grant making organization led by young women and transgender youth, which focuses on social justice activism. She is also a member of the Black Took Collective, a group of experimental black poets embracing critical theory about gender, race, and sexuality.
Martin has taught at the University of Pittsburgh, The New School, and Bard College. In June 2013, she was a was a featured writer for Harriet.
Buy Dawn’s Beautiful Books
Life in a Box is a Pretty Life
http://www.nightboat.org/title/life-box-pretty-life
Praise for Life in a Box is a Pretty Life
from Fanzine
“Shades of a Bruise: A Review of Life in a Box is a Pretty Life” by Paul Cunningham
“I think of the contorted poems of Life in a Box is a Pretty Life as themselves boxes. Imprisoned voices. Entering one of these boxes might feel more like something akin to giving one’s self over to crisis. Or chaos. How exactly should one feel about their participation in these boxes? I think it depends on the reader. The reader could possibly feel like they’re looking into a mirror; another might feel like they’re gazing down a corridor of Hell. Again, the reflection/refraction depends on the reader. Perhaps a reader will feel like they’re stepping into familiar territory, or they might feel explicitly uninvited once immersed within these boxes. Or even suddenly, violently deformed by these boxes. Defamiliarized and/or re-shaped by these boxes. Strengthened and/or bolstered by these boxes. One might also not know how to feel. These boxes might induce sweat, nausea, discomfort…”
Read the full review here: http://thefanzine.com/a-review-of-dawn-lundy-martins-life-in-a-box-is-a-pretty-life/
Discipline
http://www.nightboat.org/title/discipline
A Gathering of Matter / a Matter of Gathering
(Winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize)
https://www.amazon.com/Gathering-Matter-Canem-Poetry-Prize/dp/0820329916?ie=UTF8&qid=1465815730&ref_=la_B00823WJJW_1_5&s=books&sr=1-5
Read More from Dawn Lundy Martin Online
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/dawn-lundy-martin#about
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/dawn-lundy-martin
https://www.poetrysociety.org/psa/poetry/crossroads/new_american_poets/dawn_lundy_martin/
http://msmagazine.com/blog/2014/04/29/five-feminist-poems-for-national-poetry-month-5-modern-frame/
http://www.readab.com/dmartin.html
Interviews
http://lithub.com/on-the-black-avant-garde-trigger-warnings-and-life-in-east-hampton/
https://bostonreview.net/poetry/NPM-2016-karen-lepri-interviews-dawn-lundy-martin
https://pen.org/interview/three-questions-dawn-lundy-martin
https://www.loc.gov/poetry/interviews/dawnlundymartin.html
http://blogthisrock.blogspot.com/2016/02/split-this-rock-interview-with-dawn.html
Hear Dawn Lundy Martin Read
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5UX66tOxPM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0nIpt-B-lA
And So Important Today: Dawn Lundy Martin, Claudia Rankine, and Messiah in Conversation: Readings and Discussion of Justice Poetry
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuFE5ybTFhM
Beautiful reading, y’all ❤
xo
Mary
Mary Carroll-Hackett: Poetry and Prose 
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