The She Said Dialogues: Flesh Memory

Literature & Fiction

Oliver, Akilah

Poetry

Smoke Proof / Erudite Fangs, 1999

Poetry. Akilah Oliver's collection of poetry THE PUTTERER'S NOTEBOOK is #3 in the Belladonna Chapbook Series, published in editions of 300. Part of an ongoing series of historico-political note-taking, this radical and incomparable poet continues to question subjectivity, identity, race, gender, geography, travel and the rest of the wrought contemporary landscape. Akilah Oliver has been artist in residence at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center in Los Angeles and has received grants from the California Arts Council, The Flintridge Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. She has taught at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and Naropa University. She is currently core faculty at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics' Summer Writing Program at Naropa University. She lives in Brooklyn.

The Putterer's Notebook (Belladonna Chapbook, 3)

Belladonna Books

"Don't expect sense from these poems, in which grief, politics, literary theory, and sexuality interweave. But do expect language surprise and beautiful metaphors. . . . When [Akilah] Oliver presents her experiences in metaphor-rich language, the reader feels what she feels: incredible loss, infinite pain."—Library Journal
“An extraordinary gift for everyone.”—Alice Notley
Written for her son, Oluchi McDonald (1982–2003), Akilah Oliver’s poems incorporate prose, theory, and lyric performance into a powerful testimony of loss and longing. In their journey through the borderlands of sorrow, they grapple with violence, find expression in chants, and, like the graffiti she analyzes, become a place of public and artistic memorial. “If memory is the act of bearing witness,” she writes, “then the dream is a friend driving us somewhere.”
Akilah Oliver is the author of the she said dialogues, recipient of the PEN/Beyond Margins Award. Born and raised in Los Angeles, she currently lives in Brooklyn and curates the Monday Night Reading Series at the Poetry Project.

A Toast in the House of Friends

Self-Help

Death & Grief

Coffee House Press

In her original author’s note to the 1999 edition, Akilah Oliver writes,“What I am trying to do in these poems is investigate the non-linear synapses between desire, memory, blackness (as both a personal identity and a non-essentialist historical notion), sexuality and language.” the she said dialogues: flesh memory proves to be not only still timely twenty years later, but essential reading for understanding intersectional politics and poetics in our current moment.

the she said dialogues: flesh memory

History & Criticism

Nightboat Books

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Books by Oliver, Akilah