Therí A. Pickens ’05 is a poet, a scholar, and the Charles A. Dana Professor of English and Africana at Bates College. Drawing on her studies of comparative literature at Princeton, Pickens produces powerful scholarship in her fields, which include Arab American, Black, and disability studies. Her work has appeared in publications including The New York Times’ Overlooked obituaries and Ms. magazine, and she has appeared on podcasts including Busy Being Black and Contemporary Black Canvas.
Pickens’ debut poetry collection, What Had Happened Was, is a complex, form-driven exploration of Black storytelling, popular culture, and history. In it, she disrupts the status quo surrounding these subjects and invites you to ponder the question her work so often explores: how do we tell stories that adequately describe and assess the world we live in today?
PAW reached out to Pickens, with her rich knowledge of poetry and storytelling, for three poetry books she might recommend to readers. She chose these:
By Paisley Rekdal
I appreciate how Rekdal explodes the poem on Angel Island so that we get a full picture of what the West looks like historically, culturally, economically. As Utah State Poet Laureate, she put together the project as a commemoration for the 150th anniversary of the transcontinental railroad. Her idea of translation as a cultivated loss speaks to the literal act of translation and the hybrid project (there’s a website in addition to the book) she created.
By Joanne V. Gabbin et al.
As a lifelong student, I love how an anthology both shapes my knowledge of a subject and introduces me to new information, people, and ideas. This anthology comes from the Furious Flower Center at James Madison University — one of the institutional homes of Black poetry — and it provides a fulsome introduction to contemporary Black poets.
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