Evie Shockley is an American poet. Shockley received the 2012 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in Poetry for her book ''the new black'' and the 2012 Holmes National Poetry Prize. She was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2018.

Early life and education

Born in 1965,"Evie Shockley." ''Gale Literature: Contemporary Authors'', Gale, 2012. ''Gale Literature Resource Center'', link.gale.com/apps/doc/H1000206812/LitRC?u=clic_stthomas&sid=bookmark-LitRC&xid=56e3ca4e. Accessed 5 Oct. 2023. Shockley is originally from

Nashville, Tennessee Nashville, often known as Music City, is the capital and List of municipalities in Tennessee, most populous city in the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is the county seat, seat of Davidson County, Tennessee, Davidson County in Middle Tennessee, locat ...

. Shockley received a BA from

Northwestern University Northwestern University (NU) is a Private university, private research university in Evanston, Illinois, United States. Established in 1851 to serve the historic Northwest Territory, it is the oldest University charter, chartered university in ...

, studied law at the

University of Michigan The University of Michigan (U-M, U of M, or Michigan) is a public university, public research university in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest institution of higher education in the state. The University of Mi ...

from whence she received her JD, and received a PhD in English from

Duke University Duke University is a Private university, private research university in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity, North Carolina, Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1 ...

Career

Shockley began as an instructor at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. In 2002, she started her career as an assistant professor at

Rutgers University-New Brunswick Rutgers University ( ), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a Public university, public land-grant research university consisting of three campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's C ...

in New Jersey. Her work toured South Africa in 2007 as part of ''Biko 30/30'', an exhibit dedicated to activist Steve Biko. She published the book ''Renegade Poetics: Black Aesthetics and Formal Innovation in African American Poetry'' in 2011. The book explores the poetics of the

Black Arts Movement The Black Arts Movement (BAM) was an African Americans, African-American-led art movement that was active during the 1960s and 1970s. Through activism and art, BAM created new cultural institutions and conveyed a message of black pride. The mov ...

. ''the new black'', published in 2011 was lauded by poet Le Hinton and he also said Shockley was the "present and future of poetry." In this book her poetry draws connections within our culture, for instance a poem that cites statistics and black lives through poetry. In 2017 Shockley released her book of poetry, '' semiautomatic''. Her work includes a kind of

collage Collage (, from the , "to glue" or "to stick together") is a technique of art creation, primarily used in the visual arts, but in music too, by which art results from an assembly of different forms, thus creating a new whole. (Compare with pasti ...

style that mixes more tradition forms with quizzes or labels and compares historical figures and contemporary cultural icons with scenes of civil rights movements and atrocities of the twenty first century. The title plays with the same kind of pun referring to the gun and also her take on a cycle of contemporary reactions to violence. She dedicated this book to Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi who founded

Black Lives Matter Black Lives Matter (BLM) is a Decentralization, decentralized political and social movement that aims to highlight racism, discrimination and Racial inequality in the United States, racial inequality experienced by black people, and to pro ...

Awards

In 2012 she was awarded The Holmes National Poetry Prize. She was a

MacDowell Colony MacDowell is an artist's residency program in Peterborough, New Hampshire. The program was founded in 1907 by composer Edward MacDowell and his wife, pianist and philanthropist Marian MacDowell. Prior to July 2020, it was known as the MacDo ...

Fellow in 2013. Shockley's book, ''the new black'', won the 2012 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. ''semiautomatic'' was a 2017 finalist for ''The Believer'' Poetry Award and the ''LA Times'' Book Prize.

Bibliography

* ''The Gorgon Goddess'' (Carolina Wren Press, 2001) * ''a half-red sea'' (Carolina Wren Press, 2006) * ''31 words * prose poems'' (Belladonna* Books, 2007) * ''the new black'' (Wesleyan University Press, 2011, 2012 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in Poetry) * ''Renegade Poetics: Black Aesthetics and Formal Innovation in African American Poetry'' (University Of Iowa Press, 2011) * ''semiautomatic'' (Wesleyan University Press, 2017) *

References

External links

* Evie Shockley, Roderick A. Ferguson, Maria A. Windell, Daniel Worden
"Reconsidering Claudia Rankine's Citizen: An American Lyric. A Symposium, Part I"
''Los Angeles Review of Books''. (6 January 2016) * Adam McGee, Ed Pavlić, Evie Shockley
"From the Editors: Allies"
''Boston Review''. (23 October 2019) {{DEFAULTSORT:Shockley, Evie 1965 births Living people 21st-century American poets Duke University alumni The New Yorker people Northwestern University alumni Poets from Tennessee University of Michigan Law School alumni