BRATTLEBORO — Antidote Books, 15 Putney Road, presents a launch of Shanta Lee's new book, Black Metamorphoses, on Friday, Feb. 24, from 6 to 7:15 p.m.
(1)Black Metamorphoses, published by Etruscan Press (etruscanpress.org) is an illustrated poetry collection that has been described by the author as “piercing a 2000+ year-old veil connecting directly to Ovid's Metamorphoses through an interpretation, conversation and interrogation.”
Through exploration of a range of myths, she explains, the book “rises above direct conversion of the work into the Black experience through inversion, bending, and taking brazen chances.”
Shanta Lee is the author of Ghettoclaustrophobia: Dreamin' of Mama While Trying to Speak Woman in Woke Tongues, the winner of the 2020 Diode Press full-length book prize with an honorable mention from the Sheila Margaret Motton Book Prize and reviews featured in the Poetry Foundation's Harriet Books, Seven Days, and The Kenyon Review.
Black Metamorphoses is her second full length poetry collection, inspired by her lifelong love of mythology.
She examines the myth of Narcissus within the context of imperialism, explores the power dynamic between the Black female body and colonialism through Ghanaian myth, and asks, “What happens when a whole group is stricken with a hunger that, when satiated, remains unquenchable while causing an unnamable, unquantifiable damage?” and “What happens when colonialism, imperialism, and white supremacy are internalized or become the backdrop against one's ancestral and current lived experience?”
She has an undergraduate degree in Women, Gender, and Sexuality from Trinity College, a Masters of Business Administration from the University of Hartford, and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Non-Fiction and Poetry from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. She teaches Media Studies at The Putney School and says she enjoys anything that allows her to explore beneath the surface, “especially breaking into abandoned places.”
When not writing poetry, Shanta Lee works on her memoir project; produces and reports her “Seeing” series for Vermont Public; and tends to her photography projects.
For information about her work, visit shantalee.com.