SOUL CULTURE

An insightful collection of essays and interviews about Black poets and poetry. It examines firsthand the lives of legendary Black writers who made a way out of no way to illuminate a road map for budding creators desiring to follow in their footsteps.

Acclaimed Cave Canem poet and essayist Remica Bingham-Risher interweaves personal essays and interviews she conducted over a decade with 10 distinguished Black poets such as Lucille Clifton, Sonia Sanchez, and Patricia Smith to explore the impact of identity, joy, love, and history on the artistic process. Each essay is thematically inspired, centered on one of her interviews, and uses quotes drawn from her talks to illuminate their philosophies, as well as her own life and work as co-created by and along with these elders.
Some essays included are:
- "blk/wooomen revolution"
- "Girls Loving Beyoncé and Their Names"
- "The Terror of Being Destroyed"
- "Standing in the Shadows of Love"
- "Revision as Labyrinth"

Noting the frustrating tendency for Black artists to be pigeon-holed into the confines of various frameworks and ideologies - Black Studies, Women's Studies, LGBTQIA+ Studies, and so on - Bingham-Risher reveals the multitudes contained within Black poets, both past and present. By capturing the radical love ethic of Blackness amid incessant fear, she has amassed not only a wealth of knowledge about contemporary Black poetry and poetry movements, but also a historical record of Black poetry throughout the latter half of the 20th century, and into the early decades of the 21st.

Examining cultural traditions, myths, and music from the Four Tops to Beyoncé, Bingham-Risher reflects on the enduring gifts of art and community. If you've ever felt alone on your journey into the writing world, the words of these poets are for you.


Remica Bingham-Risher is a poet, interviewer and essayist, a Cave Canem fellow and Affrilachian Poet. Her book, Soul Culture: Black Poets, Books, and Questions That Grew Me Up, will be published by Beacon Press in August 2022. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Writer's Chronicle, Callaloo, Essence and a host of other outlets. She is the author of Conversion, winner of the Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award; What We Ask of Flesh, shortlisted for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and Starlight & Error, winner of the Diode Editions Book Award and a finalist for the Library of Virginia Book Award. She is the Director of Quality Enhancement Plan Initiatives, which help faculty integrate writing into the classroom, at Old Dominion University. She resides in Norfolk, Virginia with her husband and children.