Join us at Red Emma's Book for a reading of A LITTLE TRUTH ON YOUR SHIRT with HBO Def Poet Sonya Renee. Come hear new work and get an autographed copy of the outstanding collection.
Red Emma's Friday, June 18, 2010 at 7:00pm 800 St. Paul Street Baltimore, MD 21202
An encounter over the weekend reminded me it has been ten years since I joined the the spoken word community of Washington, DC. My first time was at mothertongue, a women's spoken word venue. Prior to finding myself on the stage at the Black Cat, I had been writing in the privacy of my apartment and performing my work on long car trips by myself. Then one day one of my friends signed me up to read and I was blown away by the audience response.
I'm no Sonya Renee Taylor, but I can hold my own. When I first started out I use to perform almost every week somewhere in D.C. I even took a year off from my day job to perform and teach writing workshops. That was a very cool year.
Over the years, I've turned my attention to my screenwriting and publishing life and don't perform as much. But my encounter over the weekend reminded me that there are people who only know me in my poet persona. So, I decided to dig up one of my favorite poems, But Until Then, and record myself. This piece is about five years old and not how I normally perform it. Consider it a remix:)
Start sharpening those Google skills and get ready to win a FREE and signed copy of our newest book A LITTLE TRUTH ON YOUR SHIRT!
To qualify you must be the first to provide a correct answer in the comment section of this blog. If you have already won a free copy you are not eligible this week.
Question: What is the title of the next book to be released by GirlChild Press? Don't know the answer or someone already beat you to it - then order your copy at www.girlchildpress.com/products.html for the pre-sale price of $10.00. Free shipping on first copy! Good Luck!
We are just a couple weeks from the release of A LITTLE TRUTH ON YOUR SHIRT and we are already starting the rounds on interviews and booking readings.
In this video, at the WHUR studio with Joe Gorham, Sonya talks about her decision to put a manuscript together, while in New Zealand, and seeking out a publisher. She ends with a poem from the book. Enjoy - then make your way over to www.girlchildpress.com/products.html to purchase your copy of the new collection. Promise you wont be disappointed:)
Start sharpening those Google skills and get ready to win a FREE and signed copy of our newest book A LITTLE TRUTH ON YOUR SHIRT!
To qualify you must be the first to provide a correct answer in the comment section of this blog. If you have already won a free copy you are not eligible this week.
Question: Who is the little girl on the cover of Growing Up Girl: An Anthology? -if you come up with who she is AND her name, you are the ultimate winner!
Don't know the answer or someone already beat you to it - then order your copy at www.girlchildpress.com/products.html for the pre-sale price of $10.00. Free shipping on first copy! Good Luck!
Start sharpening those Google skills and get ready to win a FREE and signed copy of our newest book A LITTLE TRUTH ON YOUR SHIRT!
To qualify you must be the first to provide a correct answer in the comment section of the blog. If you have already won a free copy you not eligible this week.
Question: WHAT IS THE OFFICIAL MAILING ADDRESS FOR GIRLCHILD PRESS?
Don't know the answer or someone already beat you to it - then order your copy at www.girlchildpress.com/products.html for the pre-sale price of $10.00. Free shipping on first copy! Good Luck!
I have thought long and hard about the kind of author I wanted to be the first to be released under GirlChild Press. Up until now the press has been releasing anthologies, but I was fully aware that we would make the shift to single-author books in 2010 and I wanted someone who matched our mission. I also wanted someone who was serious about their craft, understood the work involved in publishing a book and would be willing to do the work necessary to promote the book and generate sales.
When HBO Def Poet Sonya Renee Taylor approached me with the idea for her book I was a little skeptical. Sonya is a devastingly amazing performer but I had no information that said she could translate all that energy into a manuscript that would be worth publishing. Well, she spent the winter working on a manuscript that not only featured her stage work, but also included a large body of compelling and rich pieces that any "page poet" would gladly claim as their own.
It seems that over the years, while Sonya was crafting her complex wordplay performance pieces, she was also constructing and reworking smaller pieces that she hoped to one day put together in a book. Well that day has arrived.
A Little Truth on Your Shirt will be released on May 5, 2010. To get your book before the release date feel free to pop over to the website and order your copy today (and save $5.00) Each copy will be personally signed by Sonya.
Stay tuned for readings and book signing information.
An amazingly busy weekend in DC. One of the tasks on my to-do-list was the photo shoot for the new book by Sonya Renee Taylor.
We have been putting the A Little Truth on Your Shirt project together while 3,000 miles apart. While I was in L.A., Sonya met with the official GirlChild Press graphic designer, Kendra Kuliga, to sketch out some ideas for what she would like to see for the cover. Now I am in DC and Sonya is gigging some where in the south, so I am overseeing the photo shoot.
Our model for this project is the Sudanese beauty Elen Awalom. Elen is a talented photographer in her own right - which made the shoot so much easier and efficient.
Check out our video on the shoot and keep an eye out for the new cover.
I caught up with Sonya Renee Taylor at L.A.’s famous Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffle restaurant this week to get the low down on what has been happening in her poet's life. We have recently switched coasts (She back to east and me, newly here, on the west.) and I wanted to compare notes about living the artist's life – fulltime. Sonya is an HBO Def Poet and National Poetry SLAM winner and over the last couple of years has taken the leap to make her living as a fulltime artist on the road. Her verbal acrobatics have taken her from Texas to New Zealand and back again.
I first saw Sonya do her thing at a venue in Washington, D.C. about five years ago. D.C. is one of those places where you can literally go to a venue every night and hear some amazing work being delivered. From the moment Sonya hits the stage, you can’t take your eyes off her. She is this voluptuous, confident sister armed with take-no-prisoner poetry. That particular night she came with an over-the-top, part erotic, part public service announcement piece on using condoms. By the time it was all said and done, the audience was left begging for more. I didn’t know Sonya at the time, so count me shocked when a few months later, while attending the March for Women’s Lives on the National Mall, I heard her distinct and booming voice coming from the main stage. Her call to arms piece “What Women Deserve” energized the 1.6 million people in attendance in a way few of the other headliners were able to.
About a year later we ended up sharing the same stage at MotherTongue, a women’s open mic, and after the show we formally met. I was not surprised to discover that Sonya has a master's degree in non-profit management and has devoted a good chunk of her adult life to issues impacting a great many marginalized populations. She has lent her expertise to educating and protecting sex workers, getting the word out on HIV prevention, and protecting women’s right to choose. No wonder her poetry comes off so real. She is at ground zero on many of these important issues and knows the ramifications if we remain silent and do nothing.
But Sonya knows how to keep it fun and sexy on stage as well. She wants people to enjoy themselves and for those who come to her performance with a certain set of expectations she wants to shake them of those. “People who are new to slam/performance poetry sometimes believe it’s not as good as 'page poetry' or worse, that it is just plain bad,” she shares. Five minutes into any of her sets and they quickly abandon those notions. She says she loves to watch the looks on her audiences’ faces when she goes to some taboo place through her work. “First, they are always shocked, then self-conscious and eventually they loosen up and go along for the ride,” she says. During her performances she brings as much of herself to the stage as she can. She references her blackness, her womanness, her thickness and strength. “People know when you are faking it. They know when you are just pushing the words out and don’t care whether or how they land.”
So how does she keep her work and herself fresh when she is performing at such a constant pace? She says she has over 800 poems in her catalog to pick from (about 200 of them memorized) and tries to read her audience at the very beginning to get a sense of what they need to hear. She admits there are times that she gets bored with doing her “top 10” – she gets a lot of requests for her signature pieces – but figures there are worse ways a girl could make a living than telling her truth through her poetry.
Sonya’s recent move back to the east coast is also inspiring her to take some new risks with her work. She wants to adopt a new tone for her poetry and address subjects that she might have neglected in the past. She is also putting together a poetry book, A Little Truth on Your Shirt, that will debut in early 2010. (Her latest CD, Thick Girl, can be purchased at www.PoetCD.com.) Any trepidation she has about switching things up on her fans she keeps in check by recognizing that, as she grows, her work grows, and that’s good for everyone involved.
I recently discovered a video performance of one of her poems that I’ve never heard. I don’t know if “Slices” is in her top 10, but it should be. Enjoy!
