Tracie Morris facts for kids

Tracie Morris is an American poet, artist, and teacher. She is known for her unique and experimental sound poetry. This means she uses sounds and the way words are spoken to create art, not just the words themselves. Tracie Morris is also a performance artist, which means she performs her work live for audiences. She was born in Brooklyn, New York. Today, she is a professor at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, a famous writing program.

Education and Learning

Tracie Morris has studied a lot! She earned a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Poetry from Hunter College. An MFA is a special degree for artists and writers. She also got her Ph.D in Performance Studies from New York University. A Ph.D is the highest degree you can get, and hers focused on how people use speech, poetry, and Black art.

She didn't just study in the U.S. Tracie Morris also learned classical British acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. She studied American acting at Michael Howard Studios too.

Career and Performances

Tracie Morris is most famous for her live performances. She has written many books and her work is included in many collections of writing. She started her career as a poet and performer in New York City in the early 1990s.

She became well-known in the "slam" poetry scene at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. Poetry slams are like competitions where poets perform their original work. In 1993, she won the Nuyorican Grand Slam Championship. She then competed in the National Poetry Slam.

That same year, Tracie Morris also won a "national haiku slam." A haiku is a short Japanese poem. Her interest in this type of poetry led her to travel to Asia in 1998 to learn more about different poetic forms and cultures there.

Tracie Morris has performed at many famous places around the world. These include Lincoln Center and The Whitney Museum in New York, and even the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

Her work is popular with both slam poets and a group called Language Poets, who like to experiment with language. She has also won awards, like the Creative Capital Performing Arts award in 2000. While she is known for experimental poetry, she also writes poems in more traditional styles.

Tracie Morris is also known as a sound artist. She specializes in sound poetry, which uses the sounds of words and voices as a main part of the art. Her work was even shown at the 2002 Whitney Biennial, a big art exhibition.

She has taught at several universities. Tracie Morris made history by becoming the first tenured African-American poet at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. This means she has a permanent teaching position there.

Fellowships and Awards

Tracie Morris has received many special awards and opportunities called fellowships. These fellowships allow artists and scholars to focus on their creative work or research.

For example, she was a fellow at the University of Pennsylvania and the Atlantic Center for the Arts. In 2018-2019, she was a Woodberry Poetry Room Fellow at Harvard University. In 2021, Tracie Morris received a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship for Poetry. This is a very important award given to people who have shown outstanding ability in their fields.

Helping Others

Tracie Morris also leads workshops and helps different groups of people. She teaches creative writing and voice skills. She also gives advice to activists, artists, young people, women, and other communities.

She has served on the boards and committees of many organizations. These include the New York Foundation for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts. She also leads workshops for innovative poetry at places like St. Mark's Poetry Project and Naropa University.

Featured Recordings

Tracie Morris has recorded music with other artists.

With Elliott Sharp

• Terraplane: Forgery
• Terraplane: Secret Life
• Radio-Hyper-Yahoo
• Terraplane: Sky Road Songs
• 4AM Always

With Uri Caine

• The Goldberg Variations (Winter & Winter, 2000)

Books

• Chap-T-Her Won, 1993, TM Ink
• Intermission, 1998, Soft Skull Press
• "Rhyme Scheme", 2012, Zasterle Press
• Handholding: 5 kinds, 2016, Kore Press
• Best American Experimental Writing 2016 (co-edited with Charles Bernstein, Seth Abramson, Jesse Damiani, Wesleyan University Press, 2017)
• Per Form/Hard Kore: joca seria press 2017 (English with French translation by Olivier Brosard, Vincent Broqua, Abigail Lang)
• Who Do With Words: Chax Press 2018

Poetry

• 401 Requiem
• Boating Duozetuor
• Slave Sho' to Video Aka Black but Beautiful
• The Mrs. Gets Her ... Kicked
• Project Princess
• Leonine Viewing