Shade Is a Place

From National Poetry Series winner MaKshya Tolbert, a ＂startlingly original debut＂ (Maggie Millner) that meanders toward possibilities of arboreal relief among entanglements of place, property, and urban planning in Charlottesville, Virginia

Shade is a place meanders east-west along Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall, seeking ＂a Black sense of place＂ at the pace of stressed shade and street trees, the mall’s architectural history, and the speaker’s ongoing questions and reflections. The collection of poems is a moving invitation to open one’s attention by looking up, down, and always within. Through lyric walking poems (＂tree walks＂ and ＂shade walks＂) and Bashō-style travelogue, Shade is a place unfolds as much through arboreal life as through one’s inner life--sometimes alone, sometimes with others, and always among turning trees.

MaKshya Tolbert (she/they) recently found their way back to Virginia, where they chair the Charlottesville Tree Commission, serve as guest curator for the New City Arts Fellowship, and graduated with an MFA in creative writing from the University of Virginia. MaKshya is the recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship and fellowships from Community of Writers, Tin House, and Roots. Wounds. Words. Inc. Their work can be found in the Kenyon Review and Tupelo Quarterly, among other outlets. In their free time, MaKshya is elsewhere--a place Eddie S. Glaude Jr. calls ＂that physical or metaphorical place that affords the space to breathe.＂