NEWSWORTHY: POEMS by Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton

Description

Newsworthy wrestles with living in a culture infected by white supremacy where current media is distrusted, cursory, and impossible to escape. And yet, we yearn to know. We crave a thoughtfulness—apart from soundbites and viral videos—that plumbs deeper, one that reawakens our shared humanity, reminding us that under headlines beat all of our “pierced hearts.”

A leading light in the new poetic guard, Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton’s collection is a reimagining of the newspaper, collecting cutouts from the editing floor to resurrect those who would otherwise be forgotten alongside scenes from an “ordinary” family: mother, father, brother (Josh), and sister (Amandla), whose near and lived tragedies unfold against the backdrop of murdered black Americans. Amandla serves as a surrogate for all of us, regardless of skin color, morphing from naive bystander to headline, and uncovering what we should have seen all along: to be human in the world is to rectify its injustices.

With Newsworthy, Mouton brings us dispatches from the heart.

About the author

Born in Riverside, California, Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton is an internationally-recognized performance poet and the first African-American Poet Laureate of Houston. Formerly ranked #2 Female Performance Poet in the World, she is a founding member and executive director of VIP Arts, a non-profit dedicated to promoting literacy and the arts in underserved populations. Her genre-bending poetry has engendered unconventional collaborations with groups as disparate as the Rockets and the Houston Ballet. Her work has been featured on NPR, the BBC, and the TEDx circuit. An opera about the life of Marian Anderson, for which she wrote the libretto, premieres at the Houston Grand Opera in the spring of 2020. Mouton lives and teaches in Houston.