Marlanda Dekine is a poet and licensed social worker from Georgetown, South Carolina, and the author of Thresh & Hold, winner of the New Southern Voices Poetry Prize from Hub City Press. She is also the author and recording artist of I am from a punch & a kiss. Dekine currently serves as the first Poet Laureate of Georgetown County Libraries and is an alumnus of the Obsidian Foundation UK.
Dekine’s poems and texts have been commissioned and performed by multiple contemporary music ensembles, including Juventas Ensemble, Castle of Our Skins, counter)induction, and FUSE Collaborations in Song. Her poem “Ars Poetica,” interwoven with music by composer Douglas Boyce, has been internationally noted in Gramophone UK for its “intimate and epic perspectives” on American identity and is on Boyce’s recent album The Bird is an Alphabet. A dynamic performer, she is a Grand Slam Champion of the Soul Sista Poetry Slam and Queen of the South Poetry Slam.
Her honors include a South Carolina Arts Commission Individual Artist Fellowship in Spoken Word and Slam Poetry, a Fresh Voice of the Year Award from SC Humanities, a Langston Hughes Fellowship from the Palm Beach Poetry Festival, a Tin House Scholarship, a Co-Recipient of the Mary L. Thomas Award for Civic Engagement, and a Peace & Dialogue Award from the Atlantic Institute. Dekine’s poetry has appeared in Orion, Poetry, Callaloo, Oxford American, and other journals, and is anthologized in Coast Lines, This Is the Honey, What Things Cost, and Ecological Solidarities.
Dekine is the founder of Speaking Down Barriers and Dekine Cultural Strategies. She holds a B.A. in Psychology from Furman University, an M.S.W. from the University of South Carolina, and an M.F.A. from Converse University. She studied for one year with New York University’s Low-Residency MFA Program in Paris before transferring due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Marlanda Dekine 