by Derrick Weston Brown (Author)
To consider Wisdom Teeth is to acknowledge inevitable movement, shift, and sometimes pain. There's change hidden just below the surface and, like it or not, once it breaks, everything has to make room. So goes the aptly titled debut poetry collection from poet and educator Derrick Weston Brown. Wisdom Teeth reveals the ongoing internal and external reconstruction of a poet's life and world, as told through a litany of forms and myriad of voices, some the poet's own.
Wisdom Teeth is a questioning work, a redefining of personal relationships, masculinity, race, and history. It's a readjustment of bite, humor, and perspective as Brown channels hip-hop, Toni Morrison, and Snagglepuss to make way for the shudder and eruption of wisdom.
Author Biography
Derrick Weston Brown holds an MFA in creative writing, from American University. He has studied poetry under Dr. Tony Medina at Howard University and Cornelius Eady at American University. He is a graduate of the Cave Canem Summer workshop for black poets and the VONA summer workshop. His work has appeared in such literary journals as Warpland, Mythium, Ginsoko, DrumVoices, The Columbia Poetry Review, and the online journals Capital Beltway, Howard University's Amistad, LocusPoint, and MiPOesias. He works as a bookseller and book buyer for a wonderful bookstore which is operated by the nonprofit Teaching For Change, and is located within the restaurant, bar, coffee shop and performance space known as Busboys and Poets.
As the first Poet-In-Residence of Busboys and Poets, he is the founder and curator of The Nine on the Ninth, a five-year-old monthly poetry series, and helps coordinate the poetry programming at the 14th & V street location. He teaches poetry and creative writing to an amazing crew of seventh and eighth graders at Hart Middle school in Southeast Washington, DC, as part of the DC Creative Writing Workshop. He is a native of Charlotte, North Carolina, and resides in Mount Rainier, Maryland.