Author Talk: Camonghne Felix — Let the Poets Govern: A Declaration of Freedom

Author Camonghne Felix discusses their book "Let the Poets Govern" at Politics and Prose bookstore in Washington, D.C.

In this part-memoir, part-manifesto, an acclaimed poet interprets Black radical literary traditions to reimagine freedom through refusal.

Over the past decade, Camonghne Felix has been at the center of American politics, working in strategy, communications, and as a speechwriter. Throughout it all, she has maintained her unwavering belief in language’s foundational revolutionary potential, outside of its deployment for legislative and political ends. In this groundbreaking work of nonfiction, she argues that Black radical poetic traditions model an ethical code and overcome entrenched structures of patriarchy and paternalism, inventing a new form that examines the historical and legislative, and the personal and poetic.

Camonghne Felix, poet, essayist and former political communications strategist, is the author of Dyscalculia (One World) and Build Yourself a Boat (Haymarket Books), which was longlisted for the 2019 National Book Award in Poetry. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Academy of American Poets, Harvard Review, Poetry Magazine, Vanity Fair, New York Magazine, and elsewhere.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE

Visit us online at

#books #booktube