Harryette Mullen’s poetry collections include Recyclopedia (Graywolf Press, 2006), winner of a PEN Beyond Margin Award, Sleeping with the Dictionary (University of California Press, 2002), finalist for a National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, and Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Graywolf Press published Urban Tumbleweed in 2013. Her Silver-Tongued Companion, a critical edition of collected and uncollected poetry, is forthcoming from Edinburgh University Press. She teaches at UCLA.

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Photo: Judy Natal

In Open Leaves / poems from earth, lush haiku and poetic prose savor the abundance of a flourishing landscape, with concern for the fragility of the land on which life depends.

We see the world through her observations—the outrageous, the harshness, the beautiful, the humorous, the simple, and the unknowable…[we] consider simple pleasures and beauty as we walk forward into the world.

—Jewel Pereyra (Review: Urban Tumbleweed: Notes from a Tanka Diary (2013) in Pear Trees Review)

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This — the first in a series of artist / poet chapbooks from Black Sunflowers Poetry Press — sees Harryette Mullen's verdant and troubling poetry paired with Tiffanie Delune's sensuous, pulsating artwork. 

Tiffanie Delune is a self-taught visual artist of French, Belgo-Congolese heritage, today living in Lisbon, Portugal.

From an earlier focus on personal trauma and childhood experiences, Tiffanie is interested in the magic of storytelling that engages conversations and evokes emotions. Delune has exhibited in London, Paris, Lagos and Los Angeles and featured on Forbes, BBC Radio London, Contemporary And, The Financial Times and Artsy. Her work is held in various private collections and the permanent collections of the Fondation Gandur pour l'Art in Geneva, Switzerland as well as the Alexandra Cohen Presbytarian Hospital for Women and Newborns in New York.

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Tiffanie Delune is represented by Gallery 1957

Morgan Christie has won a host of literary awards, most recently the 2022 Arc Poetry Poem of the Year Prize and the 2022 Digging Press Chapbook Prize for People Without Wings. Her first essay collection won the 2022 Howling Bird Press Book Prize and will be published in the fall of 2023. Her work has appeared in numerous publications and she has been twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

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à genoux tells of kneeling — the delicate threshold between the reader and the act — in poems that pivot, with unsettling honesty, between history, memory and family.

"A relentless pursuit of emotional and psychic truth in this compelling debut."

—Metta Sama review of Christie’s Variations on a Lobster’s Tale

This — the second in a series of artist / poet chapbooks from Black Sunflowers Poetry Press — sees Morgan Christie’s graceful and compelling poetic response to Virginia Chihota’s soulful and candid artworks. 

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Virginia Chihota was born in Chitungwiza, Zimbabwe and currently lives and works in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She graduated in Fine Arts from the National Art Gallery Studios in Harare, Zimbabwe in 2006. Chihota represented Zimbabwe at the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013. 

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Introspective in nature, Virginia Chihota's practice is profoundly influenced by personal experiences and addresses themes such as childbearing, child rearing, marriage, kinship and bereavement. Trained as a printmaker in Harare, Zimbabwe, Chihota's use of screen-printing is as confident as it is original, mixing printing techniques with drawing to produce unique works of striking formal complexity. Chihota's works often depict the female form blending into near abstraction, highlighting the disruptive power of female agency.

Virginia Chihota is represented by Tiwani Contemporary, a London and Lagos based galleey representing artists from Africa and the African diaspora. For more information, visit Tiwani.co.uk

We have a number of projects in the Artist Poet series at various stages of development. If you have an idea that you feel might suit this series, please get in touch via the contact form.

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