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Born and raised in Arkansas, PATRICIA SPEARS JONES aka Patricia Jones has lived in New York City since the mid-1970s where she has been involved in the city's poetry and theater scenes working with Mabou Mines, the internationally acclaimed theater collective and as a poet, teacher and former Program Coordinator for the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church. POETRY, THEATER, COLLABORATIONS Spears Jones is author of two collections: The Weather That Kills published by Coffee House Press (1995) and Femme du Monde from Tia Chucha Press (2006) and two chapbooks: Repuestas!, Belladonna Books (2007) and Mythologizing Always, Telephone Books (1981) both now out of print. Of Femme du Monde, Janet Hamill wrote: "I was thoroughly seduced by Femme du Monde, by the grit and blood, wit, flesh, bone, and spirit of which the poems are made. From the particular they move to the universal, effortlessly. From the body they dissolve into space. The world they reference is mundane. The world they reference is marvelous. The senses perceive, the poet distills, and life is reduced to a healing elixir." Other positive reviews for Femme du Monde can be found in Black Issues Book Review (Tara Betts), Barrow Street (Scott Hightower), Small Press Review (Thad Rutkowski) and The Poetry Project Newsletter (Greg Fuchs). "Jim" from this volume is up on http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19178 at the Academy of American Poets website. She is co-editor of the ground-breaking, multi-cultural anthology, Ordinary Women: Poems by New York City Women with Fay Chiang, Sandra Maria Esteves and Sara Miles from 1978. Her play ‘Mother’ was commissioned and produced by Mabou Mines in 1994 with music by Carter Burwell. A second collaboration with Mabou Mines entitled Song for New York: What Women Do When Men Sit Knitting with composer Lisa Gutkin and four other poets was performed in New York from Aug. 31-Sep. 9, 2007. See www.maboumines.org. "The Brooklyn Song" was published in The Brooklyn Rail, www.brooklynrail.org/2007/10/poetry/the-brooklyn-song. Other collaborations included performances with Lenora Champagne and Carolee Schneemann, and in theater works directed by Bob Holman and on www.sandrapayne.com, a web page of award winning African American artist, Sandra Payne. For recent and upcoming events, click here.
Her poems are anthologized in broken land: Poems of Brooklyn; Bowery Women: Poems; Jazz Poems; Poetry After 911; bum rush-the page, a defpoetry jam; Best American Poetry, 2000; Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Café, The Woman That I Am: The Literature and Culture of Contemporary Women of Color' and Black Sister. Fifth Wednesday nominated "Beuys and the Blonde" for a Pushcart Prize. Print and electronic journal publications include http://jacketmagazine.com/32/holiday-album.shtm ed. by Elaine Equi; Columbia Poetry Review #21; http://www.naropa.edu/notenoughnight/; PMS #8, guest ed. Honoree Jeffers, Bomb, Black Renaissance Noire, TriQuarterly, Rattapallax 12, nocturnes 3, Callaloo, Crab Orchard Review, Court Green, Warpland, www.mipoesias.com; 88: A Journal of Contemporary American Poetry, Telephone, Agni, Barrow Street, Callaloo, Hanging Loose, The American Voice, IKON, Ploughshares, www.poetz.com, The World, The Recluse #3,and Crazy Horse. "All Saints Day" was translated into Czech by poet, translator and musician, Pavla Jonssonova.
ARTS WRITING AND COMMENTARY
CRITICAL ATTENTION
TEACHING/CONFERENCES/READINGS/COMMUNITY She has performed and/or held workshops at a range of venues such as The Arkansas Literary Festival, Barnes & Noble at Astor Place, Lesley University, Columbia College in Chicago, Chicago State University, Woodland Pattern, Fordham University, Poets Out Loud series; University Rhode Island Read/Write series; Bread Loaf, Hollins University, Rhodes College, Intersection, Just Buffalo, St. Mark’s Poetry Project, Poets House, The New Museum of Contemporary Art, the Nuyorican Poets Café, the Bowery Poetry Club, McNally Robinson Bookstore, the University of Kansas at Lawrence, the Center for Book Arts, the Envision Festival at Bard College, University of Rhode Island, and the Studio Museum of Harlem.
GRANTS AND PRIZES Portrait photo by Teri Slotkin ; Literary Festival photo-Glenn Nishimura |