PUBLISHER’S COMMENTS
Tara Betts has had an extraordinary career as a spoken word artist, activist, poet, teacher, and scholar. Coming from Chicago, she had the likes of Gwendolyn Brooks as a mentor; became a member of the pre-eminent African American poetry organization, Cave Canem; had residencies from Ragdale Foundation, Centrum and Caldera, and an Illinois Arts Council Artist fellowship; appeared on HBO’s “Def Poetry Jam” and the Black Family Channel series “SPOKEN” with Jessica Care Moore; and has performed in readings and festivals in Cuba, London, New York, the West Coast, and throughout the Midwest. I first learned about Tara in 2009 as an upcoming “darling” of the black poetry community who recently relocated to New York. I checked her out and really dug her work, so much so that I did an extensive interview with her for phati’tude Literary Magazine (2010). In the ensuing years, we’ve worked on a number of projects together: appearances at the Bowery Poetry Club and the Langston Hughes Library on behalf of the magazine; writing an introduction for Claire Millikin’s poetry collection, After Houses (2014), and recently the afterword for What Does it Mean to Be White in America? (2015).
Since moving to New York, Tara received her PhD from Binghamton University and recently returned to Chicago, where she is currently a professor at the University of Illinois. Her work has appeared in numerous journals, magazines, and books, and she is the author of Arc & Hue (Willow Books, 2009) and the chapbook/libretto THE GREATEST!: An Homage to Muhammad Ali (2010). I think the best way to describe Tara’s work is to quote what I wrote about her in that interview: “This hip-hop bred, multicultural child of the 1980s has been challenging poetry’s social and aesthetic boundaries since she emerged from Chicago’s poetry scene in the early 1990s. Fusing stage-based, urban word slinging poetics with academic poetry, Betts creates a juxtaposition of two styles and visions.” This is not the total sum of Tara’s work – she has since stretched beyond this depiction by incorporating her poetry into her prose, and using her prose in her scholarly works in order to connect to the general public. On that note, I look forward to working with Tara on some future projects (my lips are sealed for now), as she continues to grow and reshape her work. Her forthcoming poetry collection, Break the Habit (Trio House Press) will publish in 2016.
—Gabrielle David
