An influential poet has died at the age of 61. Thomas Sayers Ellis was the founder of a community of Black poets, as well as a musician, photographer and bandleader.
JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
An influential poet has died at the age of 61. Thomas Sayers Ellis died after suffering from respiratory issues earlier this month in St. Petersburg, Florida. NPR’s Neda Ulaby has this remembrance.
NEDA ULABY, BYLINE: Thomas Sayers Ellis took the stage at New York City’s Bowery Poetry Club in 2008.
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THOMAS SAYERS ELLIS: Here’s a poem about being skinny.
ULABY: You can see him reading the poem called “Sticks” on YouTube. It’s autobiographical – about growing up with a violent dad…
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ELLIS: (Reading) His eyes were the worst kind of jury – deliberate, distant.
ULABY: … And wanting to be just like that formidable father.
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ELLIS: (Reading) A plagiarist, hitting the things he hit. I learned to use my hands watching him use his.
ULABY: But Ellis learned to use his hands to write poetry.
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ELLIS: (Reading) My first attempts were filled with wild noise – violent, uncontrollable blows. The page tightened like a drum, resisting the clockwise twisting of a handheld chrome key, the noisy banging and tuning of growth.
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ULABY: Thomas Sayers Ellis was born in Washington, D.C. He got an MFA from Brown University. In 1987, he attended the funeral of James Baldwin. That moved him to help start a community for Black poets that became known and admired as the Dark Room Collective.
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ULABY: Ellis was also an accomplished photographer and bandleader. He co-founded a free jazz ensemble, here performing at New York’s Vision Festival in 2019.
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ELLIS: A single continuous call (ph). Shall art not art be an antidote? Medievally fascinated (ph). Art, not art…
ULABY: In 2016, Ellis was dismissed as a visiting professor at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop after anonymous allegations of sexual misconduct published online. He never commented about the charges, but kept working.
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ELLIS: I can’t prevent the poems from coming.
BONITA LEE PENN: Right.
ULABY: In a YouTube interview with poet Bonita Lee Penn in 2013, Ellis said surrendering to poetry was not an easy process.
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ELLIS: Get frustrated, scratch my head, bored. Just get up, come back, sit down again and bang the pencil against the page.
ULABY: Until, he said, he found the beat and could begin.
Neda Ulaby, NPR News.
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