Cedric Tillman's Blog - Posts Tagged "in-my-feelins"

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

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.

Hi all (some):

I'm grateful for what's been an accidentally busy summer for online readings for me. I had come to terms with the idea that I just wouldn't be doing promotion of IN MY FEELINS because I couldn't imagine pursuing online readings but the generosity of several old friends (and some new ones) prevented me from going into a hole. So...

*On September 21, I'm tentatively scheduled to read a couple of pieces for April Armstrong's Oral Diktion Academy series. This is broadcast on Facebook and the show runs from 8-10 September 21, 2020.

*Back on July 15, Caleb Beissert of the Poetry Open Mic Asheville series had me "up" for the second time.

*On June 18, Kimberly Simms Gibbs and Andrew Clark of the CarolinaPoets reading series invited me to read with fellow Cave Canem alums Glenis Redmond and Tyree Daye for Juneteenth.

*And finally, on May 20, my old friend Al Black of the Mind Gravy Reading Series down in Columbia, SC, invited me to read.

Further off-I'm thrilled and honored to be doing an online reading on Nov. 6 for Furious Flower, an organization that does so much to promulgate Black poetry. Many thanks to the generous assistant director of FF, Dr. Lauren K. Alleyne (a seriously good poet in her own right) and director Dr. Joanne Gabbin-loved to be in the company of these good folks when I could get down to Harrisonburg pre-COVID. (James Madison U. in Harrisonburg, VA, is FF's home.)

Please tune in the Oral Diktion and Furious Flower readings on FB, and don't forget to pick up copies of IN MY FEELINS from me (see my profile here, also my Twitter profile) or elsewhere (order from your local bookstore, Barnes and Noble online, or Amazon; LILIES IN THE VALLEY remains available through Small Press Distribution [spdbooks.org]). Thanks!

I'll be reading at McIntyre's Books this Sunday, October 29 at 2 p.m. in Pittsboro, NC with with Aruna Gurumurthy. The reading is sponsored by the North Carolina Poetry Society.

McIntyre’s Books is located at 200 Market Street (Fearrington Village) in Pittsboro. From the Poetry Society's announcement:
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CEDRIC TILLMAN graduated from UNC Charlotte and American University's Creative Writing MFA program. His debut poetry collection, entitled Lilies in the Valley, was published by Willow Books in 2013. His latest offering, In My Feelins, was published by WordTech Poetry in 2019. Cedric lives in Charlotte.

ARUNA GURUMURTHY is a creative thinker and poet who has published seven books since 2015. Her poems appear in Bellevue Literary Review (forthcoming), storySouth, South 85 Journal, Penwood Review, and others. Aruna lives with her loving family in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and brings change in the world, one poem at a time.

I'll be reading at the Anson County (NC) Library on August 18 at 10:30 a.m. It's humbling to be reading "down home" after all these years. I'm grateful to Dianne Welch of the library and Alton Chewning, whose family is well known to many of us from the area, for helping to make this happen.

August 18, 2025, 10:30 a.m.
Hampton B. Allen Library
120 S Greene St, Wadesboro, NC 28170