THOMAS SAYERS ELLIS, POET & PHOTOGRAPHER

“A new and original voice in American poetry.” —Midwest Review

Thomas Sayers Ellis was born and raised in Washington, D.C. His first, full collection, The Maverick Room, was published by Graywolf Press in 2005, for which he received a Mrs. Giles Whiting Writers’ Award and the 2006 John C. Zacharis First Book Award. The collection is "marked by inner-city youth culture energy that is part lyrical narrative, part 'Parliament Funkadelic', a blend of chaos and control through the sheer and simple power of words."(Midwest Review). He is also the author of The Good Junk (Take Three #1, Graywolf 1996); a chapbook The Genuine Negro Hero (Kent State University Press, 2001) and the chaplet Song On (WinteRed Press 2005). His Breakfast and Blackfist: Notes for Black Poets is forthcoming from the University of Michigan Press, Poets on Poetry Series. He is a contributing editor to Callaloo and Poets and Writers.

Mr. Ellis co-founded The Dark Room Collective in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1988 and earned a M.F.A. from Brown University in 1995. His work has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Poetry, Grand Street, Tin House, Ploughshares and The Best American Poetry, 1997 and 2001. He has received fellowships and grants from The Fine Arts Work Center, the Ohio Arts Council, Yaddo and The MacDowell Colony. He is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Sarah Lawrence College and a faculty member of The Lesley University low-residency M.F.A program in Cambridge, Mass.

ABOUT THE MAVERICK ROOM

“The wondrous The Maverick Room, Ellis’s opus of sonic site-specific artistry, reminds us of Ralph Ellison’s sampling of Emerson’s observation that ‘geography is fate.’” —Michael Eric Dyson

In this powerhouse debut, Thomas Sayers Ellis in one poem prognosticates, “Pretty soon, the Age of the Talk Show / Will slip on a peel left in the avant-gutter.” The result is The Maverick Room, the testing ground of determination and serendipity, where call and response becomes Steinian echo becomes hip-hop becomes a bootlegged recording hustled out a DC go-go club. With its defiance for any one tradition or voice, Ellis’ debut collection becomes a powerful argument against monotony—just when “All their stanzas look alike,” just when language fails in the face of catastrophe, just when, as Ellis confesses, “the twin terrors at the center of the word dollar / have made me and my craft liar-cowards.” The Maverick Room introduces a brave, intelligent, and original new voice to American poetry.

Thomas Sayers Ellis Website