Cedric Tillman's Blog - Posts Tagged "charlotte"

Charlotte's Park Road Books carries LILIES IN THE VALLEY. Give them a shout (www.parkroadbooks.com, http://www.indiebound.org/stores/park...)

Lilies in the Valley

A review of Lilies, by poet and teacher Joseph Ross. I am thankful to Joseph for his kindness in picking up the book and taking the time.

"Cedric Tillman’s poetry collection Lilies in the Valley has vision and faith. It looks and believes. These poems look deeply into human concerns with vivid details and rich, sometimes amusing descriptions. What they always do, for me, is draw me to look deeply at my own life. Tillman explores our various identities as family members, citizens, and people of varying levels of faith. The beauty of the poems is so strong it invites us all to the same exploration. For this, we can be grateful to Cedric Tillman and to Willow Books for getting these fine poems into our hands. I’ve been enjoying this collection for a few months now and I know I will return to it again and again..."

http://josephross.net/?p=1909

Please check out some of Joseph's work here.

http://mainstreetrag.com/bookstore/pr...

Hey all:

I'm very excited to say LILIES is available for Amazon Kindle, if y'all do that sort of thing. It's $7.99. The print version is there too, of course. Many thanks to Willow Books for all the work on this.

http://www.amazon.com/Lilies-Valley-C...

Come catch me and a few friends-we'll be reading at Happy Accidents in Rock Hill, Sunday Aug. 9. Time TBA.

157 E Main St | Suite 300
Rock Hill, South Carolina
(803) 246-2725

Again- failed to post about it but I was thrilled to be reading w/ my sister, Cave Canem comrade & fellow American University MFA alum Venus Thrash, author of The Fateful Apple (Hawkins Publishing, 2014) at UNCCharlotte Center City on March 16. Venus is such a star- it's always a pleasure to hear her resonant voice and feel the passion she brings to a reading. I highly recommend The Fateful Apple and can't wait for her next one.

Thanks to the UNCC English & African Studies Depts, The Honors College (particularly Dr. Malin Pereira), Chancellor's Diversity Challenge Fund, Center City Campus, and grad student Kristen Stewart for all her work on our gorgeous promo flyer. And thanks to everyone that came out-it was good to see faculty like Dr. Janaka Lewis (English) & Dr. Chris Cameron (History) down at Center City.

Google these names and buy a book.

More on Venus here:
http://venusthrash.wix.com/venusthrash

I want to say thanks to these presses for acknowledging my work this year. I was named a semifinalist for the Pleiades & Akron Prizes earlier this year, and found out today that I was named a finalist for the Press 53 Poetry prize.

I am so happy to see this manuscript get some love. I remember after finishing my MFA how I thought my thesis was so ready to go - thank God LILIES didn't see the light of day for 9 years. I sent it everywhere and got a couple of nice letters, but didn't place anywhere. This is the 6th semi/finalist placing for IN MY FEELINGS in the last 2 years (finalist for Akron last yr!), and it's cool to see the work pay off- but even more than that, it's cool feeling as if maturity and knowing what I want to put out in the world has improved my work in the eyes of unbiased observers.

I'm very happy to see a press from home (Winston stand up!) recognize this work. Hoping to come back to this space soon with news of some press taking a chance on this thing...

Cedric

I'll be reading August 14 at 7 pm back (near) home in Hickory, NC. Come by or tell a friend if you know somebody down there!

https://www.focusnewspaper.com/poetry...

Poetry Hickory is a monthy reading series held the second Tuesday of each month from 7:00 – 8:30 P.M. at Taste Full Beans Coffee House (29 Second St. NW) in downtown Hickory, NC. Each reading is preceded by Writers’ Night Out, beginning at 5:30 also at Taste Full Beans, coordinated by Scott Owens as NC Writers’ Network Regional Representative. These meetings and readings are open to the public and free of charge.

The series was founded by Scott Owens in September 2007 and is sponsored by Taste Full Beans and Main Street Rag. Each reading includes two featured writers followed by a 30-minute Open Mic. Open Mic participants must sign up by 7:00 and will be given 3 minutes for their reading.

https://poetryhickory.wordpress.com/a...

Hi all:

Happy to announce that my second collection, IN MY FEELINS, is out now!

Get it from me: $21 inc. shipping, signature; Venmo (Cedric-tillman-1), Cash App ($CedricTillman), PayPal (ctwriter@hotmail.com)

or for $19 at:

Park Road Books, Charlotte
https://www.parkroadbooks.com/book/97...

Barnes and Noble:
https://www.parkroadbooks.com/book/97...

Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/My-Feelins-Ced...

IN MY FEELINS' page on my publisher's (WordTech) site (includes samples, blurbs, links to Barnes and Noble, Amazon)
https://www.wordpoetrybooks.com/tillm...

"When the world makes you into a mixtape, and what you need and what you click on and how you love seems a-jumble, read the poems of Cedric Tillman. These are fabulous poems of candor and jump, muscle and song. But his astonishing new book is also a compendium of testimonies-'Testimonial Poetics' might be a thing, starting now-to help us define ourselves in the moment, and our momentary selves."- Alan Michael Parker

"Cedric Tillman knows the reaches of the skipped stone. These poems are all-human-at once vulnerable, humorous and peacock. In My Feelins holds everything up to the light in consideration-from the domestic to the sociopolitical-while the most critical examination is reserved for the self. The reader will find themselves laughing out loud at imaginative political commentary and freshly devastated as Tillman revisits the terrorist attack in Charleston, SC and his own father's death. This collection is reflective of a heart shaped by origin and witness-a life worth reading about."- Kwoya Fagins Maples

"'Being free means getting used to the ghosts'-this is the heart of Tillman's collection. Through his mastery of persona and imagery, Tillman gives a voice to all the ghosts of his neighborhood and our neighborhood, the ghosts of his history and ours. In My Feelins is a great lyric collection, and a necessary reminder of the freedoms that can only be achieved by reckoning with the voices inside us and around us."- Jason McCall

Hey all-

I'll be in NYC for a hot minute reading from FEELINS. Come through!

2/20, 6:30 - 8:30 pm

The New School, Wollman Hall
65 West 11th Street
New York

Come celebrate the recent publications of new work by three brilliant Cave Canem poets. Recipient of the 2019 Josephine Miles Award from PEN Oakland, James Cagney is the author of Black Steel Magnolias in The Hour of Chaos Theory (Nomadic Press, 2019), a debut collection of which poet Connie Post says, “There is much to behold in this masterful book….” Poet and visual artist Xandria Phillips‘ debut collection, HULL (Nightboat Books, 2019), is praised by poet Thylias Moss for being “brilliantly executed. Everything precise. Xandria Phillips is no ordinary architect.” Cedric Tillman is the author of two poetry collections, most recently, IN MY FEELINS (Word Poetry, 2020), praised by author Alan Michael Parker for holding “fabulous poems of candor and jump, muscle and song.” Free and open to the public. Refreshments served. Co-sponsored with The New School Creative Writing Program.

James Cagney is a poet from Oakland, California. He has appeared at venues throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond, including Vancouver, Chicago, and Mumbai. James’ first book, Black Steel Magnolias in The Hour of Chaos Theory (Nomadic Press, 2019), is the winner of the 2019 Josephine Miles Award from PEN Oakland. It is available now from NomadicPress.org More of James’ writing can be found at TheDirtyRat.blog.

Xandria Phillips is a poet and visual artist from rural Ohio. Xandria has received fellowships from Oberlin College, Cave Canem, Callaloo, and the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, where they are the First Wave Poetry Fellow. Their poetry has been featured in American Poetry Review, Black Warrior Review, Crazyhorse, Poets.Org, Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. Their first book, HULL was published by Nightboat Books in 2019.

Cedric Tillman holds a BA in English from UNC Charlotte and graduated from American University’s Creative Writing MFA program. He is a Cave Canem Graduate Fellow and a former Nation Magazine (now Boston Review) “Discovery” contest semifinalist. Cedric’s poems appear in several publications including Pleaides, Rove, The Manhattanville Review, Furious Flower: Seeding the Future of African American Poetry, Iodine Poetry Journal and Home Is Where: an anthology of African American Poets from the Carolinas. Between 2016 and 2018, his second collection, IN MY FEELINS (Word Poetry, 2020), received semifinalist recognition in contests sponsored by Saturnalia Books, Cleveland State University, and Fresno State University; and finalist recognition from Press 53, Pleiades and the University of Akron. In 2017, his poem “the flag” received Special Mention recognition for the Pushcart Foundation’s Pushcart Prize. His debut collection, entitled Lilies in the Valley, was published by Willow Books in 2013. Cedric hails from Lilesville and Charlotte, NC. He currently lives in northern Virginia.

I was honored to learn at the last minute that Dr. Leak, who I had for Af-Am Lit 22 years ago, was teaching Lilies in the Valley last week. It was an absolute treat to talk to the students and read poems that I rarely read or had never read. I sat in on both of last week's courses via Zoom and it was extremely gratifying to be a part of all the frank and intimate discussion that the poems elicited on topics from race and family to relationships and sexuality. This was only my second virtual class visit (h/t to poet/novelist Destiny Birdsong, who taught the book back in '14/'15 at Vanderbilt and invited me in remotely as well as in person.) I'm looking forward to getting up to the alma mater in person sometime this semester.