Sunday, March 19, 2023 - 11:00am to 12:00pm
The Keene Toadstool Hosts
Shanta Lee Gander
presenting her new book
Black Metamorphoses
Sunday, March 19th at 11 am
Black Metamorphoses, invites a reckoning of the past inviting readers to sift through known and unknown parts of history through verse, collective historical memory, and mythos of the forcibly traveled Black body. Black Metamorphoses pierces a 2000+ year-old veil inspired by a range of Ovidian myths while resisting a direct conversion of the work. This collection explores the Black psyche, body, soul, through inversion and brazen confrontation of work that has shaped Western civilization. In a poetic range of forms, voices, and rhythms, the reader is bathed in ancestral memory, myth, and sense of the timeless of the shapeshifting, resilient Black body. This complete volume of work enters into another level of conversation with original interior illustrations created by visual artist Alan Blackwell. These illustrations create an additional kind of text and layer of mythos for the reader.
Shanta Lee is a writer of poetry, creative nonfiction, journalism, a visual artist and public intellectual actively participating in the cultural discourse with work that has been widely featured. She is also the creator and producer of Vermont Public’s “Seeing...the Unseen and In-Between within Vermont’s Landscape” and is a regular contributor to Ms. Magazine and Art New England.
Shanta Lee is also the author of the poetry collection, GHETTOCLAUSTROPHOBIA: Dreamin of Mama While Trying to Speak Woman in Woke Tongues, winner of the 2020 Diode Press full-length book prize and the 2021 Vermont Book Award. Within this latest illustrated poetry collection, (Etruscan Press, 2023) is a work that Shanta Lee describes as a 2,000+ year-old phone line opened to Ovid as well as an interrogation of the Greek mythos while creating her own new language in this work. Black Metamorphoses has been named a finalist in the 2021 Hudson prize, shortlisted for the 2021 Cowles Poetry Book Prize and longlisted for the 2021 Idaho poetry prize. Shanta Lee is the 2020 recipient of the Arthur Williams Award for Meritorious Service to the Arts and 2020 and the 2020 gubernatorial appointee to the Vermont Humanities Council’s board of directors.
Her current multimedia exhibition, Dark Goddess: An Exploration of the Sacred Feminine, which features her short film, interviews, and photography, and other items has been on view at the University of Vermont’s Fleming Museum of Art and the Southern Vermont Arts Center. Shanta Lee has an MFA in Creative Non-Fiction and Poetry at the Vermont College of Fine Arts, an MBA from the University of Hartford and an undergraduate degree in Women, Gender and Sexuality from Trinity College.
Across all of her endeavors, Shanta Lee shares, “I have an enduring passion and hunger to explore the unseen and invite others into that space of inquiry. This endless hunger to ask questions, create conversation through visual or written commentary, and journey into the unknown catalyzes my work across various creative endeavors or collaborations even if what I unearth scares me.” Shanta Lee has an MFA in Creative Non-Fiction and Poetry at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. She has an MBA from the University of Hartford and an undergraduate degree in Women, Gender and Sexuality from Trinity College. To learn more about her work, visit: Shantalee.com.
Event address:
12 Emerald St.
Keene, NH 03431
Books:
$17.00
ISBN: 9781736494660
Availability: In Stock, Click Title for Location
Published: Etruscan Press - February 14th, 2023