and Live Readings
“I love poems that are able to comment on the socio-political climate of America without losing the heart, the humanity which should always be at the center. The grace and elegance by which Donte Collins approaches these subjects should be studied for generations to come”
—I. S. Jones on Donte Collins, 2022 Frontier Poetry New Voices Winner
Selected & Forthcoming Poems:
“Prologue #9” —Arts & Letters, 2022
“Rehearsal” —Poetry Magazine, December 2022
“Basquiat Ode” —Bomb Magazine, 2022 Poetry Prize
“The Algorithm Interviews the Author after
Scanning the Text” —Bomb Magazine, 2022 Poetry Prize
“How Not To” —Bomb Magazine, 2022 Poetry Prize
“Small and Personal” —Frontier Poetry, 2022 New Voices Prize
“Ombrophobia” —Nimrod International Journal, 2022
“Still Life with Birth Certificate” —Indiana Review, 2022 Prize
“Abecedarian at the End of the World” —Indiana Review, 2022 Prize
“Poem Erasing Itself as it is Written” —Adroit Journal, 2021
“The Forest Interviews the Wanderer” —Adroit Journal, 2021
“Modern American Film” —Great River Review, 2021
“Baptist in the Summer” —Great River Review, 2021
“Prayer Severing the Cycle” —Academy of American Poets, 2019
"Abecedarian at the End of the World" and "Still life with Birth Certificate" remind me that individual poems can contain as much feeling and historical resonance as long, unwieldy novels. What I love about these poems is that they are bound up in a citational field that is also the work of living and reading and doing these things against the grain of state violence and in the interest of a communal project of shared flourishing. The formal constraints in which the poet is working don't hinder creativity and innovation but instead give expression to the desire to "rewrite the alphabet," in the words of Joy James (who is powerfully quoted), and thus to end the world and bring about a new one. At the level of form, the poet renders the ontological fact of existing under intense conditions of duress. "you are your only address, the poet writes, and this sounds to me like a kind of benediction and a metaphysical argument as well as a rallying cry. I feel relieved that a single line can be all of those things at once! A searing, impactful voice.
Billy-Ray Belcourt on Donte Collins, 2022 Indiana Review Poetry Prize Winner
