No Dictionary of a Living Tongue Summer Launch Party

The winner of the Nightboat Poetry Prize (2015) has been described by Kazim Ali as 'formidable in its explorations of art, citizenship, and life as a body amid the social, political, and electronic networks that define us, hold us together, bind us.'

"In this necessary new collection, Duriel E. Harris has created a primer on citizenship. No Dictionary of a Living Tongue is a living archive, collecting the muscles, senses, and narratives of a life. This is a stunning achievement, at once proprioceptive, visceral, destabilizing, and visionary." — Claudia Rankine

Yale Chicago, The Silver Room and Seminary Co-op Bookstores invite you to join the party on Sunday, July 23, 2017 at The Silver Room when we celebrate the release of No Dictionary of a Living Tongue by Chicago author Duriel E. Harris. Free admission.

Event contact: events@yalechicago.org • http://durielharris.com/

RSVP via Eventbrite

Features reading, Q&A, in-store book signing with Duriel E. Harris. Special guest coloratura soprano Felicia Coleman-Evans. 

About the book: No Dictionary of a Living Tongue is formidable in its explorations of art, citizenship, and life as a body amid the social, political, and electronic networks that define us, hold us together, bind us. The poems here take many forms—prose, lyric, epigram, narrative, dialogue fragment, song, musical score, fairy tale, and dictionary entry. An elegant use of sound couples with a keen and roving intelligence and a fierce commitment to social justice to create a unique and powerful collection of poems.

About the author: Duriel E. Harris is the author of the print collections No Dictionary of a Living Tongue (2017), Drag (2003) and Amnesiac: Poems (2010); as well as Speleology (2011), a video collaboration with artist Scott Rankin. She is a cofounder of the avant garde poetry/performance trio The Black Took Collective and editor for Obsidian: Literature in the African Diaspora. She has been a MacDowell and Millay Colony fellow and has received grants from the Illinois Arts Council, the Cave Canem Foundation, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Her work has appeared in numerous venues, including Mandorla, Then & Now Awards, Ploughshares, Troubling the Line, and The Best of Fence; her work has also been translated into Polish, German, and Spanish. Harris earned degrees from Yale University and NYU, and a PhD from the University of Illinois. She is an associate professor of English at Illinois State University, where she teaches creative writing, literature and poetics.