Summer 2018 |Anastacia-Reneé | Vol. 2, Iss. 1

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. 

Poet Anastacia-Reneé kicks off our second year of  The Fight & The Fiddle. She is the current Civic Poet of Seattle, recipient of the 2017 Artist of the Year, and former 2015-2017 Poet-in-Residence at Richard Hugo House. Anastacia-Reneé is the author of two full-length collections of poetry, Forget It (Black Radish Books) and (v.) (Gramma Press), as well as three chapbooks: 26, (Dancing Girl Press), Kiss Me Doll Face (Gramma Press) and Answer(Me) (Winged City Chapbooks, Argus Press). Her cross-genre writing has appeared in several anthologies, including Women of Resistance: Poems for a New Feminism, Sinister Wisdom: Black Lesbians — We Are the Revolution, and Revise the Psalm: Work Celebrating the Writing of Gwendolyn Brooks. Anastacia-Reneé also wrote and continues to perform her multimedia one-woman show, 9 Ounces.

• The Interview: Anastacia-Reneé talks to editor Lauren K. Alleyne about teaching herself, finding community, and passing what she knows on to others.
• Critical Review: In her essay, “alice by moonlight: Anastacia-Reneé’s sheroism and survivals,” Dr. Julie Phillips Brown looks at the poetics of love and survival in Anastacia-Reneé’s three most recent collections of poetry. 
• Poems: Read “Conversation with Baldwin,” “on being free,” and “The Mother Ship is Purple” by Anastacia-Reneé.
• Writing Prompt: Which saints/neighbors/muses/figures would you summon if you could?

Photo by Adriana Hammond.