PlayHouse

Jorrell Watkins

PlayHouse
Format
Paperback
Publisher
Northwestern University Press
Country
United States
Published
15 April 2024
Pages
96
ISBN
9780810147133

PlayHouse

Jorrell Watkins

Poems on Black joy, masculinity, and the music that transforms a space into a home

Jorrell Watkins's debut poetry collection is a polyvocal, musically charged disruption of the United States's fixation on drug and gun culture. The poems in Play|House embody many identities, including son, brother, fugitive, bluesman, karate practitioner, and witness. Throughout, Watkins inflects a Black/trap vernacular that defamiliarizes the urban Southern landscape. Across three sections of poetry scored by hip-hop, blues, and trap, Watkins considers how music is a dwelling and wonders which histories, memories, and people haunt each home. Past figures such as John Coltrane, Billie Holiday, and the short-lived 1940s trio Day, Dawn & Dusk intermingle with Migos, the Watkins family, childhood friends, and loved ones both parted and departed. At its core, Play|House reckons with the truths and failures of masculinity for Black boys and men, all the while documenting moments of triumphant Black joy and love.

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