Prayers Like Shoes

Had an opportunity to meet poet Ruth Forman last week. She did a reading and poetry writing workshop. Incredible!

I never considered myself a poet, but after the workshop... well, let's just say I have a very elementary beginning of a poem. And I'm loving her poetry book, Prayers Like Shoes. Hear her read in this NPR interview. Take her poetry class at VONA.

Ruth Forman is a highly acclaimed writer and poet, as well as a former teacher in the Poetry for the People program at UC Berkeley. Her books include We Are The Young Magician, Renaissance (which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize), Young Cornrows Callin Out the Moon, and Prayers Like Shoes.

She has been described as a writer who "not only upholds the traditions of the 'sistapoets' in whose steps [she] follows--Audre Lorde, Alice Walker and Sonia Sanchez--but also boldly blazes brand new trails." In its starred and boxed review, Booklist said, "Ruth Forman['s]... poems are alive and kicking; they pound and pulse with a hard-won sense of self, beauty, femininity, strength and righteous indignation. ... Forman is sexy, bittersweet, funny, feisty and real."

A graduate of UC Berkeley (she's a former student of June Jordan, Opal Palmer Adisa, Paula Gunn Allen and Yusef Komunyakaa) and the USC School of Cinema-Television, Ruth frequently collaborates on music, dance, theatre, and media projects.

She provides readings and workshops to a wide variety of audiences, presenting her poetry nationally and internationally in forums such as the United Nations, the PBS series The United States of Poetry, the National Black Arts Festival, National Public Radio, and numerous university and community literary programs.

Highly recommended.
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