Duriel E. Harris
USA
Duriel E. Harris is a poet, performer, and sound artist. She is author of three print volumes of poetry, including her most recent, No Dictionary of a Living Tongue (Nightboat, 2017), Drag (2003) and Amnesiac: Poems (2010). Multi-genre works include her one-woman theatrical performance Thingification, as well as Speleology (2011), a video collaboration with artist Scott Rankin.
Work
Featured Work
Obsidian Volume 48.2
Poem
Kayla Kiki
Audio Feature
Her name used to be Kayla
that’s what her family still calls her
except for her father
who doesn’t even bother
to acknowledge the girl or the woman she’s become
says she betrayed where she came from
But her mother can’t deny
she’s still got the same [almond] bright brown eyes
the same soft-spoken quality
humility
a lady
no matter who she allows tween her thighs
it’s probably all lies
besides
Kayla never said nothing outright
not even out of spite
when Stan, her dad,
went at her hard—like he would a man
The whole block came outside
He was clowning her, riding her, Good ole Deacon Stan
It was wild—he was hot, black-out mad
Hearing that his only daughter had been photographed
More than once or twice
at the speakeasy down the street
and had been seen night after night
across town dressed to the nines
hanging with drag queens and bulldaggers
Kayla barely made a sound
Nary said a word when he beat her down
Back Catalogue from
Obsidian
Duriel E. Harris
Biography
Duriel E. Harris is a poet, performer, and sound artist. She is author of three print volumes of poetry, including her most recent, No Dictionary of a Living Tongue (Nightboat, 2017), Drag (2003) and Amnesiac: Poems (2010). Multi-genre works include her one-woman theatrical performance Thingification, as well as Speleology (2011), a video collaboration with artist Scott Rankin. Cofounder of the avant garde poetry/performance trio The Black Took Collective, Harris is showcased in the Poetry Foundation and Manual Cinema’s short film Multitudes celebrating the Walt Whitman BiCentennial. A featured resident poet/teacher at the Lynden Sculpture Garden and the transformational Naropa Capitalocene Summer Writing Program, Harris was a guest at the powerful Festival Internacional de Poesía de La Habana (Cuba). Recent writing is featured with Harriet Blog (The Poetry Foundation), the Academy of American Poets, and Letters to the Future: Black WOMEN/Radical WRITING (Kore Press 2018). Recent and upcoming appearances include performances at the Lake Forest College Allan L. Carr Theatre, the Chicago Jazz Festival (with Douglas Ewart & Inventions), the Greenhouse Theater (Chicago), the Naropa Capitalocene, The Votive Poetics Workshop (New Zealand), and Festival Internacional de Poesía de La Habana (Cuba).
Harris has been a MacDowell and Millay Colony fellow and has received grants from the Illinois Arts Council Agency, the Cave Canem Foundation, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Her work has appeared in numerous venues, including BAX, Mandorla, The &Now Awards, Of Poetry & Protest, Ploughshares, Troubling the Line, and The Best of Fence; and her compositions have been translated into Polish, German, and Spanish. Harris earned degrees in Literature from Yale University and NYU, and a PhD from the University of Illinois at Chicago Program for Writers.
The 2018 Offen Poet, Harris is an associate professor of English in the graduate creative writing program at Illinois State University and the Editor of Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora.
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