Description: "SCORCHED EARTH moves between ruins and radical love-fragility and tenderness in the wake of a divorce transform and expand into virtuosic stanzas, full of ache and sweetness. From ekphrastic poems on Kara Walker, to a standout series on the first Black Bachelorette, Clark's stanzas shift between reverence and irreverence, hold institutional and historical pains alongside sensuality and queer, Black joys"--
Brief description: Tiana Clark is the author of the poetry collections Scorched Earth; I Can't Talk About the Trees Without the Blood, which won the 2017 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize; and Equilibrium, which won the 2016 Frost Place Chapbook Competition. Clark's other honors include a Pushcart Prize, a Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. She is a graduate of Vanderbilt University and Tennessee State University, where she studied Africana and women's studies. She is the Grace Hazard Conkling Writer-in-Residence at Smith College. Find out more at TianaClark.com.
Review Quotes: "Writing on the heels of divorce, Clark channels desperation, humor, desire, and anger into themes of race, sex, and relationships .... These are wonderfully intertextual poems bristling with bright intelligence, formal variation, and outlandishly feral longing."
--Booklist