The Holloway Series in Poetry welcomes Morgan Parker
Each academic year, The English Department’s Holloway Series in Poetry welcomes several renowned and rising contemporary poets to campus to share and celebrate their work.
This week, the series welcomes poet Morgan Parker. Morgan Parker is the author of There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé (Tin House Books 2017) and Other People’s Comfort Keeps Me Up At Night (Switchback Books 2015), which was selected by Eileen Myles for the 2013 Gatewood Prize and a finalist for the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award. Parker received her Bachelors in Anthropology and Creative Writing from Columbia University and her MFA in Poetry from NYU. Her poetry and essays have been published and anthologized in numerous publications, including The Paris Review, The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop, Best American Poetry 2016, The New York Times, and The Nation. Parker is the recipient of a 2017 National Endowment of the Arts Literature Fellowship, winner of a 2016 Pushcart Prize, and a Cave Canem graduate fellow. She is an Editor for Day One and Little A, and the creator and host of Reparations, Live! at the Ace Hotel in New York. With Tommy Pico, she co-curates the Poets With Attitude (PWA) reading series, and with Angel Nafis, she is The Other Black Girl Collective. She is a Sagittarius, and she lives with her dog Braeburn in Brooklyn.
Below you will find the poem, “The Gospel According to Her,” from There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyonce.
Parker’s reading will be held April 19th at 6:30pm in room D37, Hearst Field Annex, with an introductory reading by English grad student Lise Gaston. The event is free and open to the public.
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO HER
What to a slave is the fourth of july.
What to a woman is a vote.
What to a slave is river water.
What to a slave is an award show.
What to a slave is fine china.
What to a woman is a canopy bed.
What to a slave is the hard sky.
What to a woman is please.
What to a woman is the bottom of a glass.
What to a slave are flatlands from an aircraft.
What to a woman is permission.
What to a woman is the milky way.
What to a slave is a square technically it’s perfect.