Tracie Morris is an American poet. She is also a performance artist, vocalist, voice consultant, creative non-fiction writer, critic, scholar, bandleader, actor and non-profit consultant. Morris is from Brooklyn, New York. Morris's experimental sound poetry is progressive and improvisational. She is a tenured professor at the Iowa Writers' Workshop.
Education Born in Brooklyn, New York, Tracie Morris earned a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree in Poetry at Hunter College and her Ph.D in Performance Studies at New York University with an emphasis on speech act theory, poetry and Black aesthetics, under the supervision of José Esteban Muñoz. She also studied classical British acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London and American acting at Michael Howard Studios.
Career Primarily known for her live performances, Morris has written ten books (as of 2021) and has been heavily anthologized as a writer in multiple genres. She emerged as a poet, performer and writer from the Lower East Side poetry scene in the early 1990s. She became known as a local poet in the "slam" scene of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe in New York City, New York, and eventually made the 1993 Nuyorican Poetry Slam team, the same year she won the Nuyorican Grand Slam Championship. She competed in the 1993 National Poetry Slam held that year in San Francisco with other poets from the Nuyorican team.Aptowicz, Cristin O'Keefe. (2008). Words in Your Face: A Guided Tour Through Twenty Years of the New York City Poetry Slam. New York City: Soft Skull Press. "Chapter 14: First and Always; Graduates from the NYC Poetry Slam's First Wave";
Morris also won the "national haiku slam" that year and her interest in the form lead her to Asia to research poetic forms and cultures from the region in 1998. She has been a member of the MLA (Modern Language Association), Associated Writing Programs, The Shakespeare Society and The Shakespeare Forum. She has performed at Lincoln Center, St. Mark's Poetry Project, CBGB, the 92nd Street Y, Lollapalooza, South by Southwest, The Whitney Museum, MoMA, Albertine, The New Museum, Centre Pompidou (Paris), Centre for Creative Arts(Durban), Victoria and Albert Museum, Queensland Poetry Festival (Brisbane, Melbourne) and many other regional, national, and international venues.
Morris's work is embraced by slam and performance poets, as well as the Language Poets, a contemporary poetic avant-garde. She is featured, for example, on Charles Bernstein's Close Listening radio program, "PennSound"."PennSound", upenn.edu. Accessed March 4, 2024. and was featured at a 2008 conference on Conceptual Poetics alongside Bernstein, Marjorie Perloff, Craig Dworkin and others. She received the Creative Capital Performing Arts award in the year 2000. In addition to being an experimental poet, Morris writes poetry in conventional and nonce forms.
Morris is known as a sound artist and specialist in sound poetry,Sound poetry as well as an occasional theatrical performer. She was an early collaborator with Ralph Lemon for his Geography Trilogy. Her work was featured in the 2002 Whitney Biennial.2002 Whitney Biennial List of Artists
Morris has taught in several institutions of higher education. She is the first tenured African-American poet of the Iowa Writers' Workshop after serving as the program's inaugural distinguished visiting professor of poetry.
Creative and academic fellowships Morris was the 2007–08 Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania,Fellow in Poetics & Poetic Practice was a 2018 Master Artist of the Atlantic Center for the ArtsSound poet Tracie Morris, orlandoweekly.com. May 4, 2018. and the 2018–19 Woodberry Poetry Room Fellow at Harvard University. In 2021, Morris received a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship for Poetry.
Consultant, workshop leader, panelist Morris leads workshops on creative writing, voice and planning consultations for activists, artists, youth, women, postgraduate students and underserved communities as well as private and non-profit groups.
She has served on board of trustees/board of directors, committees and artist advisory boards for: the New York Foundation for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, African Voices, the Black Rock Coalition and other national and grassroots institutions.
She is also a workshop leader for innovative poetry, conducting intensives for St. Mark's Poetry Project, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Poets' House, Naropa University, Kore Press, and other national arts organizations. Profile, allenginsberg.org. April 2018.
Featured recordings With Elliott Sharp Terraplane: Forgery Terraplane: Secret Life Radio-Hyper-Yahoo Terraplane: Sky Road Songs 4AM Always
With Uri Caine The Goldberg Variations (Winter & Winter, 2000)
Books
Chap-T-Her Won, 1993, TM Ink Intermission, 1998, Soft Skull Press "Rhyme Scheme", 2012, Zasterle Press Handholding: 5 kinds, 2016, Kore Press Best American Experimental Writing 2016 (a.k.a. BAX 2016) co-edited with Charles Bernstein, Seth Abramson, Jesse Damiani, Wesleyan University Press, 2017 Per Form/Hard Kore: joca seria press 2017 (English with French translation by Olivier Brosard, Vincent Broqua, Abigail Lang) Who Do With Words: Chax Press 2018
Poetry
401 Requiem Boating Duozetuor Slave Sho' to Video Aka Black but Beautiful The Mrs. Gets Her Ass Kicked Project Princess Leonine Viewing
Notes
References The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry in Anthologies by Tessa Kale Right to Rock: The Black Rock Coalition and the Cultural Politics of Race by Maureen Mahon The Stamp of Class: Reflections on Poetry and Social Class by Gary Lenhart Uptown Conversation: The New Jazz Studies by Robert O'Meally, Brent Hayes Edwards, and Farah Jasmine Griffin Living in Spanglish: The Search for Latino Identity in America by Ed Morales, St. Martin's Press: 2003 Production Notebooks Volume 2 by Mark Bly Geography: Art/race/exile by Ralph Lemon and Ann Daly Listen Up! by Zoe Anglesey Girls Guide to Taking Over the World: Writings From The Girl Zine Revolution by Tristan Taormino, Karen Green, and Ann Magnuson Poetry Slam: The Competitive Art of Performance Poetry by Gary Mex Glazner We Who Love to Be Astonished: Experimental Women’s Writing and Performance Poetics. edited by Laura Hinton and Cynthia Hogue. The Muse is Music: Jazz Poetry from the Harlem Renaissance to Spoken Word by Meta DuEwa Jones University of Illinois Press, 2011 Choice Voice Noise: Soundings in Innovative African American Poetry by Kathleen Crown in "Assembling Alternatives: Reading Postmodern Poetries Transnationally" edited by Romana Huk, Wesleyan University Press, 2003 Ranft, Erin (January 2014). "The Afrofuturist Poetry of Tracie Morris and Tracy K. Smith". Journal of Ethnic American Literature
External links
Personal website PennSound page, many recordings and videos. Poetry Foundation. Poetry MP3 Picks - Poems for online listening Jon Pareles, "Music Review: A Steamy Mix of Poetry, Afrocentric Themes and Love" (on Tracie Morris's Sonic Synthesis), The New York Times, December 18, 1999. Rakim's Performativity Speaking for Myself