Tiana Clark's 'Scorched Earth' with Maya Williams

“‘I still want joy in the end,’ Tiana Clark writes in Scorched Earth, her searing, expansive new collection of poems. This book begins with an end—the speaker’s divorce—and the poems unpack what it means to have outlived the life you’d expected to have. These are poems of black joy, queer love, and radical acceptance of the self. Scorched Earth is a hell of a book.”

—Maggie Smith, New York Times bestselling author of You Could Make This Place Beautiful

and co-present a conversation with award-winning authors Tiana Clark & Maya Williams in celebration of Clark's newest poetry collection.

SCORCHED EARTH moves between ruins and radical love—fragility and tenderness in the wake of divorce transform and expand into virtuosic stanzas, full of ache and sweetness. From ekphrastic poems on Kara Walker, to a standout series on the first Black Bachelorette, these stanzas shift between reverence and irreverence, hold institutional and historical pains alongside sensuality and queer, Black joys. This collection is steeped in rebellious abundance, intertextuality, a penchant for epigraphs, and the big emotions of the millennial psyche.

From a generational voice that “earns a place among the pantheon of such emerging Black poets as Eve L. Ewing, Nicole Sealey, and Airea D. Matthews” (Booklist), SCORCHED EARTH is a transcendent anthology for our times.

There will be an audience Q&A and book signing following the conversation.

The conversation is Saturday, March 8 at 5:00 PM (doors at 4:30 PM).

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

is the author of the poetry collections Scorched Earth; I Can’t Talk About the Trees Without the Blood, which won the 2017 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize; and Equilibrium, which won the 2016 Frost Place Chapbook Competition. Clark’s other honors include a Pushcart Prize, a Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She is a graduate of Vanderbilt University and Tennessee State University, where she studied Africana and women’s studies. She is the Grace Hazard Conkling Writer-in-Residence at Smith College.

(ey/they/she) is a religious Black multiracial nonbinary suicide survivor who was selected as Portland, ME's seventh poet laureate for a July 2021 to July 2024 term. Maya received a MFA in Creative Writing with a Focus in Poetry from Randolph College in June 2022. Eir debut poetry collection Judas & Suicide (Game Over Books, 2023) was selected as a finalist for a New England Book Award. Their second poetry collection, Refused a Second Date (Harbor Editions, 2023), was selected as a finalist for a Maine Literary Award. Their third poetry collection, What's So Wrong with a Pity Party Anyway?, was selected as one of four winners of Garden Party Collective's chapbook prize in 2024. Maya was one of three artists of color selected to represent Maine in The Kennedy Center's Arts Across America series in 2020, one of The Advocate's Champions of Pride in 2022, and one of Maine Humanities Council's recipients of the Constance Carlson Public Humanities Prize in 2024.

PARKING & TRANSPORTATION

Mechanics’ Hall is located at 519 Congress Street. Our main entrance is between Loquat Shop and the Art Mart. The Greater Portland Metro’s Congress & Casco Street Stop is directly in front of our building, served by .

Parking is available at the , which has entrances on Casco and Brown Street, with a rate of $5 per hour. Metered street parking is available on Congress, Casco, Cumberland, Free Street, and other nearby streets. Free hourly street parking is available between Parris and Alder Street.

ACCESSIBILITY

To enter our building, patrons will need to navigate a single step or request a modular wheelchair ramp. There is a wheelchair-accessible elevator to the third-floor ballroom.

If you have a particular accessibility question or request don't hesitate to get in touch with us at .

Host or Publisher Mechanics' Hall (Maine)