Arts Directory

About

Artist Bio

Marlanda Dekine is the author of THRESH & HOLD (Hub City Press, 2022) and I AM FROM A PUNCH & A KISS (unnamed LLC, 2017). Her work has been anthologized in THIS IS THE HONEY: AN ANTHOLOGY OF CONTEMPORARY BLACK POETS (2024), WHAT THINGS COST: AN ANTHOLOGY FOR THE PEOPLE (2023), and ECOLOGICAL SOLIDARITIES: MOBILIZING FAITH AND JUSTICE IN AN ENTANGLED WORLD. She has received awards and fellowships from the South Carolina Arts Commission, South Carolina Humanities, Castle of our Skins, Tin House, Hub City Press, the Palm Beach Poetry Festival, and elsewhere. Her poems have been set to music by composers, performed by chamber ensembles and singers, and published by literary magazines worldwide. Dekine is the founder of the national non-profit, Speaking Down Barriers. She holds a BA in Psychology from Furman University (2008), an MSW in Social Work from the University of South Carolina (2011), and an MFA in Poetry from Converse University (2024).

Artist Statement

My poems are led by imagination, memory, and story as well as my experience as a Licensed Master Social Worker, from and living in the Rural South. I imagine a free world where all living things are cared for, and I use poems as a place to hold these images and stories. Often set in the black-owned place where I grew up (Plantersville, South Carolina), my poems are curious about how my ancestors made it through and how I, as their descendant, will make it through. My poems open portals, or doors, that we might all be able to walk, crawl, or scoot through, liberated and free to be our true selves. Collaboration with dancers, musicians, painters, philosophers, collagists, and ministers have helped me to check my egoic mind while making my art. My poems are enhanced by listening to and making with other artists. I like to use spoken word poetry and written poetry to investigate questions about black places, intersecting identities, communal healing, maternal wisdom, spirituality, and world-making. My work asks, “What If?”, and speaks what may be possible, using the past as a portal to the future. Themes that are within my poems include LGBTQIA identity, Blackness, rural experience, the land, healing, and personal embodiment.