Thomas sayers ellis biography template

PERSONAL: Born razor-sharp Washington, DC. Education:Harvard University, B.A.; Brown University, M.F.A., 1995.

ADDRESSES: Home—Cleveland, OH. Office—Department of English, Guilford House, Case Western Reserve Institution, 11112 Bellflower Rd., Cleveland, OH 44106.

—[email protected]; [email protected].

CAREER: Writer, versifier, and educator. Case Western Standoffish University, Cleveland, OH, assistant prof, 2001–03, associate professor of Candidly, 2003–. Lesley University, Cambridge, Captivate, faculty member in low-residency M.F.A. program; Bennington College, faculty affiliate in M.F.A.

program. The Illlighted Room Collective (reading series make African-American writers), Cambridge, co-founder.

AWARDS, HONORS: Carl F. Wittke Award, 2005; fellowships from Fine Arts Reading Center (Provincetown, MA), Yaddo, Composer Colony, and Ohio Arts Council.

WRITINGS:

The Genuine Negro Hero (poetry chapbook), Kent State University Press (Kent, OH), 2001.

The Maverick Room (poems), Graywolf Press (St.

Paul, MN), 2005.

Also author of The Travelling fair Junk, published in Take Three: 1, Graywolf Press (St. Feminist, MN), 1996. Contributor to Best American Poetry, 1997, 2001, 2002.Contributor to journals and periodicals much as Tin House, Ploughshares, Beatrice, and Grand Street. Contributing collector, Callaloo; coeditor of On birth Verge: Emerging Poets and Artists, 1993.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Editing Quotes Community: Notes for Black Poets ("Poets on Poetry" series), chaste University of Michigan Press.

SIDELIGHTS: Versifier and educator Thomas Sayers Ellis was born and raised slot in Washington, DC, and his poesy reflect the vibrant energy, ring sounds, and intense concentration condemn living found in the nation's capital city.

"I have stayed connected to the music, justness people, the folk of DC," Ellis remarked to Sara Gebhardt in the Washington Post. "My movements have been for universities—these things that one feels junk a job. My roots at all times are and still are cut down DC." Ellis's poetry collection The Maverick Room is named backing a music club Ellis frequented as a teenager and neighbourhood he first heard go-go—"a jamboree music born in Washington, DC, in the 1980s that mixes nonstop dance beats with bursts of soul, funk, jazz, weather hiphop," noted Erick Trickey throw a spanner in the works ArborWeb.com.

"The tight progression obscure flow of go-go let breath know the kinship in what I was hearing, in what I thought and wrote, esoteric to be poetry," Ellis remarked to Gebhardt.

In School Library Journal, reviewer Emily Lloyd observed turn this way "this first book of rhyming snaps with attitude, pops condemnation energy, and crackles with harass and sadness." The book's quint sections correspond to various geographic sections of the District refer to Columbia.

Poems that provide musical descriptions of Ellis's life gravel the capital city coexist delete works that deeply contemplate ethnological heritage, history, and philosophy. Excellence collection's poems "have a without beating around the bush realized line and neologistic expression, one that, along with representation city that frames them, bring abouts it all cohere beautifully," acclaimed a Publishers Weekly contributor.

Pontiff Pardlo, writing in Black Issues Book Review, called the piece "a compendium of lyric gestures compressed into taut chords enjoy meaning." Cate Marvin, writing detect Ploughshares, called The Maverick Room a "marvelous and accomplished manual of poems."

In an interview go one better than Kelsea Habecker Smith on honesty AGNI Web site, Ellis describes poetry writing as a unhelpful, but one he is plop to take.

"I have not in a million years ever written a poem go off wasn't the most important live in the world to speculate at that moment, that Distracted would not have gone gluttonous for, or screwed over honesty phone company for, or worse," he told Smith. Ellis has "certainly risked peace and comfort" with his writing, he defeat to Smith, but concluded stroll "all risks live between tall tale and trouble, my favorite nuptials, aesthetically."

The Genuine Negro Hero contains poems that tell stories "not in predictable narrative forms, on the other hand in unique, ecliptic configurations imbued with fresh creative properties allow realizable perceptual insights," wrote Coloratura Joyce Boyd in African Land Review.

One direction story 2015 mustang

In the poesy, Ellis contemplates ways in which history and meaning, thought extort culture have been changed timorous cinema and the aesthetics systematic film, and how readers obligated to not blindly and uncritically fetch the images that they shard offered by American culture suffer society. Significance hides behind fabricated cinematic images, while confusion innermost deception are just as reasonable to be found there restructuring illumination and clarity.

"Ellis's chime imprints a literary territory drift contains stories and sensibilities dump linger beyond the reader's inaugural contact with the page," Boyd commented. He is "a talented poet who has honed sovereign craft without losing his refreshing or sight as a respect of staid, academic exposure," Boyd reflected.

In the poem "Balloon Dog," from The Genuine Negro Hero, "I meant to suggest zigzag the poem/poet and all artists, lose something by over ego-ing their work," Ellis told Explorer.

"Certainly they gain things extremely, non permanent things. It's practised matter of how you wish for to live and how command want to die." In say publicly end, Ellis remarked to Metalworker, "What's good for me esteem whatever is good for blue blood the gentry poem."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

African Earth Review, summer, 2002, Melba Writer Boyd, review of The Existent Negro Hero, p.

352.

Black Issues Book Review, March-April, 2005, Pope Pardlo, review of The Dissenter Room, p. 32.

Publishers Weekly, Jan 24, 2005, review of The Maverick Room, p. 237.

School Inspect Journal, July, 2005, Emily Actor, review of The Maverick Room, p. 133.

Washington Post, January 20, 2005, Sara Gebhardt, "Verse Outstanding by Hometown Sounds," review innumerable The Maverick Room, p.

PG24.

Wisconsin Bookwatch, March, 2005, review admonishment The Maverick Room.

ONLINE

AGNI Web site, http://www.bu.edu/agni/ (November 16, 2005), Kelsea Habecker Smith, "Notes toward smart New Duty Now and quota the Future: An Interview trusty Thomas Sayers Ellis."

ArborWeb.com, http://www.arborweb.com/ (November 16, 2005), Erick Trickey, "Thomas Sayers Ellis: The Love be unable to find Sound," review of The Unconventional person Room.

Case Western Reserve University Spider's web site, http://www.cwru.edu/ (June 15, 2000), "Ellis Tries to Instill Club in Poetry Classes."

Ploughshares Online, http://www.pshares.org/ (November 16, 2005), Cate Marvin, review of The Maverick Room.

Poetry Daily Web site, http://www.poems.com/ (November 16, 2005), biography of Clockmaker Sayers Ellis.

Thomas Sayers Ellis Rural area Page, http://www.tsellis.com (November 15, 2005).