Hi, everybody.
I can't tell if the thing that I like most about Francine's
poetry is how she gets right into the quick of things
with zero hesitation, right into the quick of life,
or if it's that she takes her time;
if I like better how taut, precise,
and dense these poems are or how conversational,
broad, meandering this written voice can be.
Gregory Pardlo said it better than me
that Francine's poems are, quote,
"somehow both surgical and blunt, that the poems sing.
That is, they will wake your neighbors."
To quote Randall Horton writing about Francine J Harris's
stunning first book, Allegiance, "Francine
has the maturity to veer well past the ordinary,
to defy convention, and to keep poetry alive."
Major Jackson said "one can hear heaven murmuring
in between the lines of Francine J Harris's poems."
For what it's worth, Francine herself says
"the thing I like about poetry is that it stares."
Francine J Harris has been a Cave Canem and a Callaloo
Fellow, Pushcart Prize nominee, a recipient of a 2015 NEA
fellowship, a winner of the 2014 Boston Review Annual Poetry
Contest, and Allegiance was a finalist
for the 2013 Kate Tufts Discovery and PEN Open Book
Award.
She received her MFA in poetry from the University
of Michigan, where she received a Zell Fellowship.
Her second book, Play Dead, is forthcoming in April 2016
from Alice James Books.
It's not soon enough, but I expect
we'll get a brief preview here tonight.
So please welcome Francine J. Harris.