poetry – Page 4 – darlene anita scott

[vintage UtR] rethink: The Politics of Black Self Love

7 April 20167 April 2016 darlene anita scottLeave a comment

Diggin' in the crates...

[vintage UtR] Between the Lines

6 April 20166 April 2016 darlene anita scottLeave a comment

Trust me, I am not hiding anything in my art, my writing most specifically, any more than when it was layered in imagery. It is all there. Pause in the white space and you’ll see that you get it after all. Okay so maybe I would rather people not pause because that art is my heart and soul on Front Street

Black Rage and the Invisible Black Body

4 April 20164 April 2016 darlene anita scottLeave a comment

I am here to talk about silence. And the violence of it. How it traumatizes the body that practices it as well as the bodies it is imposed upon. I want to talk about how it (silence, I mean)—and I made up this word—invisibilizes. And how that act—to render someone, a body, invisible is violence. [...]

AWP 2016 — I’ll be there, so come through and say hey

25 March 201617 May 2016 darlene anita scott3 Comments

I'll be on a panel called "Written By Ourselves: The Craft of Immobile Corporeality" on Friday, April 1 at 12 noon (Rm. 51o of the L.A. Convention Center). Stop by and hear me talk about the lovers of Jonestown and how they use the stillness of intimacy in defiance of their circumstances in that Guyana [...]

My Vivid Imagination Paints You, Instead, Grey

21 March 2016 darlene anita scott1 Comment

Why, yes, another poem! **curtsies** This is from a chapbook-on-hard-drive known as Invitations Not To Be Denied. I'll show it to y'all one of these days, but for now... MY VIVID IMAGINATION PAINTS YOU, INSTEAD, GREY Your breath in the morning—sour milk like a baby we knew would never happen but dreamt library cards and [...]

HELP…please.

29 February 201629 February 2016 darlene anita scott2 Comments

I have the opportunity to travel to Denver, NYC, L.A. and Paris in the next two (2!) months to present my creative work and I couldn't be more excited or anxious--like anxiety anxious but in a good way-- and of course humbled. I can't go to all the conferences not only because three of the [...]

Some Humble Advice for Writers

23 February 2016 darlene anita scottLeave a comment

My first blog post ever. Happy 9 year blogiversary to me.

darlene anita scott

I had a Chinese pen pal when I was in middle school. Her penmanship was meticulous. I tried to imitate it. I think handwriting is the most organic yet undervalued art—the kind most of us are capable of and don’t even realize it. You can tell such an honest story with it. It doesn’t have the affectations of most of the art we see hanging on the hallowed walls of galleries and museums. Words can be like that too.

My friend and I were joking that there are words among Black folk that are organically perfect. They just happen. In the process of just happening, they are honest and direct. And beautiful. Like when your grandmother asks you for “some sugar.” It’s sweet; it’s musical. And she warns you not to get on “that stuff.” Her directive is just as illustrative as…

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You Made It Out Alive: On the Murder of Janese Talton-Jackson

27 January 201611 October 2016 darlene anita scott3 Comments

He took sex instead of your life; maybe the glass bottle he threw at you missed; you were named “bitch” and any other list of monikers that do not appear on your birth certificate; the old woman turned on the porch light and startled him and his pistol away; he left you in the street alone and lost in a city that was not your own. You made it out alive. None of those were missteps of the fragile male ego or drunkenness. They were not about how you lead him on or were rude or rash when you refused to comply to his demand for your attention. They were about the agency you have over your life and how you live it and being denied that agency so often