Dave Harris is a poet and playwright from West Philly. He graduated from Yale University with a B.A. in Theater Studies in 2016 and is a candidate for the MFA in Playwriting at UC San Diego. He has received fellowships and awards from Cave Canem, Callaloo, Yale University, UC San Diego, The Kennedy Center, New Haven Arts and Humanities Co-Op, and The American Playwriting Foundation.
From the writer of the films SUMMERTIME and FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, Dave Harris’s stellar poetry debut takes a nuanced look at the complexities of black masculinity.
Patricide weighs those complexities and how they impact a lineage of black boys who fight to become men in the image of their fathers. More than just a book about fear or death centered on being black in America, Patricide illuminates the internal struggle to be the best man possible with the shadow of other men at your back.
Through poems on loss, music, college, and family strife, Harris examines how time shifts and changes, despite so much of a life’s architecture staying the same. Ultimately, Patricide opens itself up to reveal a story of many threads, one that finds a way to tie together in unexpected and joyful ways.
Patricide is no ordinary book of poetry. It’s “Bars Poetica” — where elegy, invective, the contemporary, and pedestrian converge to create a disarming barrage of thudding verse. Read it like you need it.
– Marcus Wicker, author of Silencer
In these poems, Harris wrests language from the havoc white supremacy and patriarchy have wreaked. Which is to say: these are love poems doused in rage.
– Claire Schwartz, author of Bound
Buy NowPatricide restricts nothing in its narrative but accomplishes everything in its clear voice and uncompromised mission.
– William Evans, author of Still Can’t Do My Daughters Hair
