Akilah Oliver
(1961 – 2011)
Akilah Oliver (April 18, 1961 – February 23, 2011) was born in L.A. Our beloved friend, poet, teacher, performer, activist, mother, sister passed away in her home in the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn, N.Y.
In the 1990’s she founded and performed with the feminist performance collective Sacred Naked Nature Girls. For several years, from the mid-90’s Akilah lived and raised her son Oluchi McDonald (1982-2003) in Boulder, Colorado where she was a teacher at Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. Recently, in New York City, Akilah taught poetry and writing at Eugene Lang College, The New School, Pratt Institute and The Poetry Project. She was a PhD candidate at The European Graduate School and a member of the Belladonna* Collaborative.
Akilah Oliver’s books include the she said dialogues: flesh memory (Nightboat Books, 2021; Smokeproof Press / Erudite Fangs Editions, 1999), a book of experimental prose poetry honored by the PEN American Center’s “Open Book” program; and A Toast In The House of Friends (Coffee House Press, 2009). Her chapbooks include A Collection of Objects (Tente, 2010), a(A)ugust (Yo-Yo Labs, 2007), The Putterer’s Notebook (Belladonna*, 2006), and An Arriving Guard of Angels, Thusly Coming to Greet (Farfalla, McMillan & Parrish, 2004). She read and performed her work throughout the country as a solo artist and with a variety of musicians and collaborators including Tyler Burba, Anne Waldman, and Rasul Siddik. She was an artist in residence at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center in Los Angeles, and received grants from the California Arts Council, The Flintridge Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. Among her many other projects, she was writing a book-length theory of lamentation. Posthumously, a CD collaboration of her work has been released by Fast Speaking Music and Belladonna*, simply titled Akilah.
Photo of Akilah Oliver by Teresa Hurst
The information on this page is meant to act as an archive and resource for Akilah’s work. If you have recordings, links, or articles to add, please email Belladonna*.
Video Recordings
Akilah Oliver: 3 Readings
A film by Ed Bowes featuring performances & texts by Akilah Oliver
2011
Marathon reading of the she said dialogues: flesh memory by Akilah Oliver
Hosted by Belladonna* Collaborative, April 18, 2021
Featuring readings by Rachel Levitsky, Michelle T. Clinton, Kim Oliver, Rachel Zolf, Steven Taylor, Fanny Ferreira, Jennifer Firestone, S*an D. Henry Smith, Carla Harryman, John Malpede, David Henderson, Imani Elizabeth Jackson, Tonya Foster, Natalie Peart, LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs, Danielle Brazell, Jaye Elizabeth Elijah, Anne Waldman, Erica Hunt, Erica Kaufman, Eleni Sikelianos, Danielle Vogel, Marqueta Oliver, Laura Meyers, Andrew Spiers, Airea D. Matthews, Stephen Motika, Dalia Elhassan, Hannah Zeavin, Denise Uyehara, Nancy Agabian, Gail Scott, Saretta Morgan, Jasveen Kaur S., Julie Patton, Michelle Puckett, Lou Florez, Marcia Oliver, and Marcella Durand, and HR Hegnauer.
A Celebration for Akilah Oliver’s the she said dialogues: flesh memory
Hosted by The Poetry Project, April 1, 2021
The Poetry Project is proud to join Nightboat in celebrating the republication of Akilah Oliver’s beloved book, the she said dialogues: flesh memory, a collection of poems which — 20 years on — continue to sustain us with new, essential, and prescient force in their investigation of “the non-linear synapses between desire, memory, blackness (as both a personal identity and a non-essentialist historical notion), sexuality and language.” Brilliant in their listening and utterance, Oliver’s poems embrace grief, desire, obstacle, and possibility, and draw us across time as Tracie Morris observes in her new foreword, into “this kind of gathering together, a collective state of being called she.”
Readers and performers include: Tyler Burba, Mayra A. Rodríguez Castro, LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs, Tonya M. Foster, Tobi Haslett, Harmony Holiday, Erica Hunt, Joyce LeeAnn Joseph & LaVonne Natasha Caesar, Marqueta Kilgore, Rachel Levitsky, Tracie Morris, Eileen Myles, Marcia Oliver, Julie Patton, Tiana Reid, Eleni Sikelianos, Stacy Szymaszek, Anne Waldman, and Rachel Zolf. With special thanks to Nightboat and to co-editors Laura Meyers, Marcia Oliver, and Rachel Zolf.
Akilah Oliver reading at Parachute: the Coney Island Performance Festival, September 2009
When asked to read, Akilah created a poem especially for the festival using a woman's blog about Coney Island as her source text. The tape ran out before Akilah finished reading her poetry both in this video and in real life. It is strange when things work out that way. Akilah Oliver was a deeply treasured member of the literary community. We are grateful to have known Akilah and honored to have had her participate in the first Parachute Festival. She was a brilliant and beloved poet whose generosity of spirit will be missed by many. Thank you, Akilah.
Akilah Oliver & Tyler Burba "A Toast In The House of Friends"
Segue Series at the Bowery Poetry Club. New York City, April 19th, 2009
Akilah Oliver reading In Aporia and The Stand Still World
San Francisco, CA, 2007
Audio Recordings
Books & Chapbooks
the she said dialogues: flesh memory
(Nightboat Books, 2021; Smokeproof Press / Erudite Fangs, 1999)A Toast In The House of Friends
(Coffee House Press, 2009)A Collection of Objects
(Tente, 2010)a(A)ugust
(Yo-Yo Labs, 2007)The Putterer’s Notebook
(Belladonna, 2006)An Arriving Guard of Angels, Thusly Coming to Greet
(Farfalla, McMillan & Parrish, 2004)
Online Work
A Collection of Objects
(Tente Press, 2010)"In Aporia" from A Toast in the House of Friends
(Poets.org, 2009)from The Putterer's Notebook
(Trick House, Issue 2, Fall 2008)Author statement
(The Tolerance Project Archive,
Originally written in 2005; Published online in 2010)
CDs
Akilah
(Fast Speaking Music & Belladonna*, 2011)Matching Half
with Anne Waldman & Ambrose Bye
“My Ongoing Query” & “Strangeness of Living”
(Fast Speaking Music, 2008)Harry’s House
Volume 1
“In Aporia”
(Fast Speaking Music, 2012)
Commentary & News
2018-02-05: Eleni Sikelianos's "Change the World" blog for the Poetry Foundation talks about the importance of poetry, the imagination, and Akilah Oliver’s notion of the “visible unseen”. “Poetry is its own not following. As it breaks and plays on the militarized forms of grammar and rhythm, it shows us other paths of existence. It shows us how not to go along….”
2017-04-12: Patricia Spears Jones mentions Rachel Levitsky and Ana Paula's conversation on Akilah Oliver for the Brooklyn Rail “I think flesh memory is about inviting the weight to hover around the body, instead of settling into the body. It’s very much about bringing something into the language….”
2017-03-01: Rachel Levitsky and Ana Paula in conversation on Akilah Oliver for the Brooklyn Rail “I am always occupying both the space of being enemy-bodied and being my own body and my own experience at the same time. This resonates with what Akilah was doing in her work….”
2016-10-03: Elise Ficarra, Associate Director at The Poetry Center, features archival work from Akilah Oliver for SF MOMA's The View From Here “Oliver reminds me that we are in time, of time, and that we need time, ‘just a little time, to get love right.'”
2016-09-14: PoemTalk episode #104: A discussion of Akilah Oliver’s “is you is or is you ain’t” Discussion hosted by Al Filreis with Yolanda Wisher, Patricia Spears Jones, and Charles Bernstein
2015-04-01: Diana Rickard for The Operating System remembers Akilah Oliver “This weekend I am awash in the arresting words of Akilah Oliver, a poet whose body of work searches meanings through language. She does this actively…”
2011-06-16: Diana Rickard on Akilah Oliver’s memorial at the Poetry Project
2011-06-14: The Best American Poetry Cara Benson on Akilah Oliver
2011-03-03: Lambda Literary Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhrán remembers Akilah Oliver
2010-07-01: Laura Smith's essay From Rupture to Remembering: Flesh Memory and the Embodied Experimentalism of Akilah Oliver This essay first appeared in MELUS: Journal of the Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States, issue 25.2 (Summer 2010), pages 103-120, and appears by permission of the journal. Copyright MELUS.
2000-07-01: Harryette Mullen “The Cracks Between What We Are and What We Are Supposed to Be”: Stretching the Dialogue of African-American Poetry
2000-02-01: How2 Discussion of Akilah Oliver’s she said dialogues: flesh memory. Rachel Levitsky and Tisa Bryant.
Memorials & Tributes
In Aporia: The Annual Akilah Oliver Memorial Reading
with Nick Von Kleist, Krystal Languell,
Wendy S. Walters, and Eileen Myles
The New School, New York
September 19, 2012In the Midst of Words I Wanted: A Tribute to Akilah Oliver
with Julie Patton, Tonya Foster, and Danielle Vogel
AWP Conference, Chicago
March 2, 2012In Aporia: The Annual Akilah Oliver Memorial Reading
with Julian Brolaski, Rachel Levitsky, Lauren Nicole Nixon, Erik Freer, Karl Leone and Kaley Foley
The New School, New York
September 12, 2011Naropa University, Summer Writing Program
Boulder, Colorado
June 17, 2011The Poetry Project with Belladonna*
New York
June 15, 2011Working [class] Reading Series:
An Akilah Oliver Celebration
Oakland, California
June 3, 201190-day upliftment ceremony held by Lou Florez
Denver, Colorado
May 23, 2011Naropa University
Boulder, Colorado
April 17, 2011Remembering Akilah
Los Angeles, California
April 16, 2011Midwest Naropa Writers & Red Rover Series
Outer Space Studio, Chicago
April 8, 2011Middle Collegiate Church
New York
March 3, 2011Nine-day upliftment ceremony held by Lou Florez
Denver, Colorado
February 25 – March 5, 2011Meditation
Naropa University, Boulder, Colorado
February 25, 2011