These Hips (and other songs to Minista to a people's soul)
Tonya Maria Matthews
Black Words Poetry Series
Alexandria, VA
(c) 1999
This seems like such a small and insignificant thing : a chapbook. Published by a small press that doesn't exist anymore. 40 pages of staple-bound insight. Except maybe in the details
Being : #1 - the Press imagined itself, in the statement about its own shadow at the end of this chapbook, to be "By the year 2k, we plan to be well on our way to becoming the Motown, or Def Jam, if you will, of Publishing" according to founder Kwame Alexander.
Founded in 1995, the small press did have some early successes; publishing 360: A Revolution of Black Poets and Tough Love: The Life and Death of Tupac Shakur. But the success now belongs to Alexander himself who is a well published and respect author.
Ms. Matthews, even at the time of this publication, was also pursuing a non-literary career in medicine. She now teaches at Wayne State University as Tonya M. Matthews. She is also the author of Blind Man's Map (2012), Still Swingin' (2005), as well as some compilations.
Some of the poems in this collection were added to a larger reprint of Still Swingin'
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