Ep 20: Taking Power Back Through Art with Nadia Alexis

Hoodoo Plant Mamas

In this episode, we're joined by poet and photographer Nadia Alexis. We discuss how writing and photography can fight erasure, the need to reclaim natural spaces for ourselves, and the impact Lucille Clifton's writing has on Black women.

Nadia Alexis is a poet and photographer born in Harlem, NYC to Haitian immigrants and she is currently based in Oxford, Mississippi. Her poetry has been published in Indiana Review, MQR: Mixtape, Shenandoah, and others. Her poetry has also been anthologized in Wild Imperfections: An Anthology of Womanist Poems and Wild Gods: The Ecstatic in Contemporary American Poetry and Prose. Her photography publications include Forgotten Lands, MQR: Mixtape, TORCH Journal, MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora, and others. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, 2019 honorable mention poetry prize winner of Hurston/Wright College Writers Award, 2020 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters photography award nominee, and 2020 semifinalist of the 92Y Discovery Poetry Contest. She is also a fellow of the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop and The Watering Hole. Her photographs have been shown in several exhibitions in the U.S. and Cuba, and she was mentored by Carrie Mae Weems in an independent scholars fellowship program for early-career artists and art historians of color. She is currently an English - Creative Writing Concentration Ph.D. student at the University of Mississippi where she studies and teaches Black literature.

Resources

• Nadia Alexis website
• Instagram: @nadialovestocreate
• Pre-order Wild Imperfections: An Anthology of Womanist Poems
• “Language", “Knees,” “Thunder,” “Lament,” and “Aubade After the Storm” Mud Season Review
• “Watershed,” “Nocturne,” and “A Horse’s Arrival,” Michigan Quarterly Review: Mixtape
• "Suppose You Failed to Cover Your Mouth & So Evil Spirits Flew Out of Your Body,” in Indiana Review
• “Cantaloupe” and “Letter to My Friend Robert,” Shenandoah
• Ezili Dantor
• "What Endures" photography series by Nadia Alexis
• "The Spirit that Resides" Carrie Mae Weems
• CCADI "On Protest and Mourning"

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This podcast was created, hosted, and produced by Dani & Leah.

Our music was created by Tasha, and our artwork was designed by Bianca.