The Poetry Project is proud to join Nightboat in celebrating the republication of Akilah Oliver’s beloved book, the she said dialogues: flesh memory, a collection of poems which – 20 years on – continue to sustain us with new, essential, and prescient force in their investigation of “the non-linear synapses between desire, memory, blackness (as both a personal identity and a non-essentialist historical notion), sexuality and language.” Brilliant in their listening and utterance, Oliver’s poems embrace grief, desire, obstacle, and possibility, and draw us across time as Tracie Morris observes in her new foreword, into “this kind of gathering together, a collective state of being called she.”

Readers and performers include: Tyler Burba, Mayra A. Rodríguez Castro, LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs, Tonya M. Foster, Tobi Haslett, Harmony Holiday, Erica Hunt, Joyce LeeAnn Joseph & LaVonne Natasha Caesar, Rachel Levitsky, Tracie Morris, Eileen Myles, Marcia Oliver, Julie Patton, Tiana Reid, Eleni Sikelianos, Stacy Szymaszek, Anne Waldman, and Rachel Zolf. With special thanks to Nightboat and to co-editors Laura Meyers, Marcia Oliver, and Rachel Zolf.