Evie Shockley

Evie Shockley is the author of two books of poetry, the new black (Wesleyan UP, 2011) and a half-red sea (Carolina Wren Press, 2006), and two chapbooks, 31 words * prose poems (Belladonna* Books, 2007) and The Gorgon Goddess(Carolina Wren Press, 2001). the new black won the 2012 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in Poetry and was also recognized by Library Journal as one of the Best Books of 2011 in Poetry and by the BCALA as a 2012 Honor Book in Poetry. Born and raised in Nashville, Tennessee, Shockley has lived in a variety of states in the South, Midwest, and Northeast, but has yet to take up residence in any place west of the Mississippi River. She currently lives in Jersey City, New Jersey and teaches African American literature and creative writing at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. Source

ode to my blackness

you are my shelter from the storm

and the storm

my anchor

and the troubled sea

nights casts you warm and glittering

upon my shoulders some would

say you give off no heat some folks

can’t see beyond the closest star

you are the tunnel john henry died

to carve

i see the light

at the end of you the beginning

i dig down deep and there you are at the root of my blues

you’re all thick and dark, enveloping the root of my blues

seem like it’s so hard to let you go when i got nothing to lose

without you, I would be just

a self of my former shadow

Published:

2011

Length:

Shorty

Literary Movements:

Contemporary

Anthology Years:

2023

Themes:

Identity

Intersectionality & Culture

Poetic Form