CANDACE HILL — SHORT LEASH KEPT ON
Published December 2022
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Short Leash Kept On is a new long poem, written in late 2022, with illustrations by the author. The book, Candace Hill writes, concerns “my passion for crime, my own type of detecting, detectives and whatever pops into my head, laced with a deep dive” into the poetry of Lloyd Addison, Russell Atkins, and the work of artist Tom Feelings. This is dizzying and dazzling work, flying in on torrents of invention like a Cecil Taylor solo or the careening cadences and limber lineages of the known and unknown poets of the Black Radical Tradition—from Atkins, Addison, and Julia Fields through to giovanni singleton and Julie Ezelle Patton; swimming in the currents of language, flying on the currents of its air, rising and falling and swooping and careening in syncopated arioso twists. “America was a place”, writes Hill. This work should be emblazoned all over whatever comes next.
“not I bud and blossom not Ilooking glass thoughtless not I
said the bosom not I said to
seek not I in too deep not I drivel
thirst not I keep it coming
nonetheless”
Weaver, multi-disciplinary artist, worker with words, writer extraordinaire, CANDACE HILL was born and raised in Queens, New York. In the 1970s and 1980s, she studied at Fordham University and Hunter College; in 1979, she was artist-in-residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem and exhibited her work at Artists Space. She was awarded a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1981, and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1985. Since then, she has exhibited widely, making public installations, publishing artists books, and curating exhibitions across New York and internationally. Today, she resides in Bridgehampton, Suffolk County, and has recently exhibited at the Sag Harbor Whaling & Historical Museum.
Review by Howard Slater at Northern Review of Books.
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