News
SC still doesn’t have a poet laureate. Georgetown County just appointed its own.
SCAC names FY2023 fellowship recipients, SC Arts Commission
Marlanda Dekine is the winner of the 2021 New Southern Voices Poetry Prize
2019 Fresh Voice: Marlanda Dekine, SC Humanities
I Am An American Q&A with Marlanda Dekine
Speaking Down Barriers opens dialogue on race, injustice
Podcast Features
Binder Podcast: Digging the Land
Book & Performance Reviews
“The poetry by Marlanda Dekine (a member of South Carolina’s Gullah Geechee community) addresses American culture and the struggle for identity from both intimate and epic perspectives. Dekine delivers a riveting spoken-word performance every bit as virtuosic as the commentary and instrumental interludes played by the trio of violin, cello and guitar – members of the artist collective counter)induction, which Boyce co-founded in 1998.”
-Thomas May, Gramophone UK
Newly Published Poetry, From Gaza to Zoom Rooms and More (Published 2022), New York Times
“I contend that Spanglish disrupts two colonizer languages to facilitate the growth of community and, by extension, the self. I believe for Marlanda Dekine, Gullah-Geechee does the same.…There’s a point in Dekine’s debut collection Thresh & Hold where they begin using Gullah-Geechee pronouns, namely e/em, in their poetry. The poem “Grain Memory” has lines such as: “What do you know about? E asks. / E bends e old body down […]” It is through the incorporation of linguistic traditions from one’s familial history that the self can be explored fully. It is through this bilingualism that the self can be most honest, where the poet can honor the past and present to build a future.”
-Reyes Ramirez, Electric Literature
“Published by Spartanburg’s Hub City Press, Dekine’s most recent poetry collection has received national recognition for good reason. Vigorous and unflinching, the poet reckons with their Gullah-Geechee heritage and forges, as if through incantation, a new identity as a Black and queer body. With an almost palpable sense of southern place, Dekine offers up a poetic voice that is at once accessible and transcendent.”
-Lindsey Jones, atHOME
Interviews
None of What I Create Began With Me, Erin Hoover, Southern Review of Books
Q&A: Writing as Liberation, Attentiveness and Remembrance, Olivia Weeks, Daily Yonder
An Interview with Marlanda Dekine, Hub City Press
Bring Marlanda to Your Community
Available for readings, workshops, facilitation, and cultural programming.
marlandadekine.com 