Associate Editor Lisa Low: In Alice Dunbar-Nelson’s “Sonnet,” “wild, shy” violets are contrasted with their flashy off-the-shelf counterparts, a juxtaposition that ends in both an appreciation of “sweet real things” and the self. “Black Womxn Are Violets” extends this conversation first by breaking it down. Through erasure of the sonnet, footnotes, and white space, Johnson-Boria’s poem creates a complex portrait of Black womxnhood that’s simultaneously an ode and much more than one.
To hear Tatiana read her poem, click below:
Tatiana Johnson-Boria (she/her) is a writer, artist, and educator. Her work has been selected as a finalist for the Prairie Schooner Book Prize, the Black Warrior Review Poetry Contest (2020), and others. She is a 2021 MacDowell Fellowship recipient and a recipient of the 2021 Brother Thomas fellowship. She’s received honorable mention for the 2021 and 2020 Academy of American Poets Prize and is a 2017 Pushcart Prize nominee. Tatiana completed her MFA in creative writing at Emerson College and is a 2021 Tin House Scholar. Find her work in or forthcoming at Ploughshares, Kenyon Review, Pleiades, and others.
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