Winter 2026 | David Mills | Vol. 9, Iss. 3
Lauren K. Alleyne, Editor-in-Chief and Executive Director of the Furious Flower Poetry Center
Tyler Richards, Video Production Supervisor | Riley M. Hollars, Graduate Editorial Assistant
Welcome to The Fight & The Fiddle, a publication of the Furious Flower Poetry Center at James Madison University. Each issue gives you a 360-degree view of a Black poet, including an interview, new poems, a critical essay, and a writing prompt inspired by our featured poet.
David Mills holds an MFA from Warren Wilson College and an MA from New York University—both in creative writing—as well as a B.A. (cum laude) from Yale University. He’s published four poetry collections, including The Sudden Country, After Mistic, and Boneyarn, winner of the North American Book Award. His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Colorado Review, Poetry Daily, Crab Orchard Review, Jubilat, Callaloo, Brooklyn Rail, Evergreen Review and Fence. He has received fellowships/grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts, Breadloaf, the Schomburg Center, New York State Council on the Arts, the American Antiquarian Society, Queens Council on the Arts, Flushing Town Hall and a Hughes/Diop fellowship. He lived in Langston Hughes’ landmark Harlem home for three years. The Juilliard School of Drama commissioned and produced Mr. Mills’ play The Serpent and the Dove. Urban Stages produced his play about Frederick Douglass: Freedom’s Trail. He worked as a teaching artist for the New York City Ballet’s Nutcracker Project and for Poets in Public Service. He wrote the audio script for MacArthur-Genius-Award Winner Deborah Willis’ curated exhibition, Reflections in Black: 100 Years of Black Photography, which showed at the Whitney and Getty Museums. He has also recorded his poetry on RCA Records and appeared on PBS and National Public Radio.
- Interview: David Mills speaks with Furious Flower Fellow Dr. Gbenga Adesina about wrestling with the archive and writing poetry from the dream state
- Critical Essay: Dr. Rachel Ansong considers David Mills‘ “poetics of excavation” in his collection, Boneyarn
- Poems: Read “Up Up And… (The Speed Boy Interlude),” “Momentary Arizona,” and “Dear… Sincerely…” by David Mills
- Writing Prompt: Bodies, history, and form collide in this prompt. Join in the dance!
Read the transcription here
Cover Design by Robert Mott
Cover Photo: Bob Adamek
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