Cornrows and Cornfields by Celeste Doaks

You can find links to all of these books, articles and poems on the Poetry Centre’s Podcasts page ( ). We also mention celeste’s monthly book recommendation column, which blends together celeste’s thoughts about literature with astrology, Litscope, and her review of the poet Rachel Long’s book My Darling from the Lions, out now in the UK but soon to appear in the US. Magazine about a recent innovative online concert given by the singer-songwriter Erykah Badu.

In addition to American Herstory, on the podcast we also discuss celeste’s five forthcoming poems about the nineteenth-century African American entrepreneur Mary Ellen Pleasant and an article that celeste wrote in Ms.

celeste has received numerous awards, such as a 2017 Rubys Grant in Literary Arts, a Lucille Clifton Scholarship, and residencies at Atlantic Center of the Arts and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. The chapbook, which we talk about in the podcast, was named best chapbook by the Maryland Poet Laureate, Grace Cavalieri, and includes poems about First Lady Michelle Obama. And in 2019 she published American Herstory, which was the winner of Backbone Press’s 2018 chapbook competition. In 2017, she edited and contributed to the anthology Not Without Our Laughter: Poems of Humor, Joy, and Sexuality, published by Mason Jar Press.

The book was listed as one of the Ten Best Books of 2015 by Beltway Quarterly Poetry. She is the author of Cornrows and Cornfields, a collection of poems published in 2015 by Wrecking Ball Press.

Cornrows and Cornfields by Celeste Doaks