DR. MARY E. WEEMS
AUTHOR | POET | PLAYWRIGHT | ACTIVIST | EDUCATOR
Winner of the 2015 Cleveland Arts Prize Emerging Artist Award for Literature
SELECT PRESS
BOOK DR. WEEMS
Blackeyed: Plays and Monologues
(Sense Publishers 2015)
This book is a compilation of Weems' work about the Black experience over the last fifteen years. The book intersects with critical race theory because the majority of this work positions race at the center of the experiences of the fictional or fictionalized characters. Embedded in these chapters are the interweaving of personal and ancestral stories, news reports, informal conversations, observations, interviews, and online research expressed in language unapologetically Black, critical, reflexive, and proud.
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For(e)closure
​(Main Street Rag Publishers 2012)
A textured chronicle of the human costs of the house foreclosure crisis in the United States, which dispossessed millions. Weems' poems combine photographic ekphrasis, news headlines, vignettes, lyrics, and object-personifications. They also explore the human cost of widespread greed. Drawing upon her own experiences of home and house-impermanence, Weems creates an unflinchingly detailed chronicle of loss. Merging her voice with the voices of the dispossessed, Weems refuses closure, making elegies of outrage against the terrible silence.
Say It Loud: Poems About James Brown
(Whirlwind Press 2011)
This anthology is a tribute in poems to James Brown and includes work by over 30 poets including Amiri Baraka, Emotion Brown, Katie Daley, Thomas Sayers Ellis, Kelly A. Harris, Tony Medina, Ayodele Nzinga, Michael Oatman, Michelle Rankins, Patricia Smith, Lamont B. Steptoe, George Wallace and Mary Weems. These poems celebrate, memorialize and speak to the legacy of the Godfather of Soul. They share their memories from childhood to adulthood of the man who was influenced by such musical giants as Little Richard, but who laid the physical and musical steps for artists such as Michael Jackson and many current rap and hip-hop musicians today.
Writings of Healing and Resistance
(Peter Lang Publishing 2008)
Writings of Healing and Resistance: Empathy and the Imagination-Intellect is a multi-authored, interdisciplinary journey. It continues the work started in Public Education and the Imagination-Intellect (Peter Lang, 2003) by extending the importance of empathy in developing an action-based social consciousness. The book encompasses a variety of forms: autoethnography, ethnodrama, poetic inquiry, and critical essay, as well as scholars' work in a number of disciplines including communications, cultural studies, sociology, anthropology, educational leadership, African American studies, and cultural foundations.
An Unmistakable Shade of Red and the Obama Chronicles
(Bottom Dog Press 2008)
An Unmistakable Shade of Red and the Obama Chronicles is a collection of Weems' poems where you'll find many moments, moods and insights. Weems both challenges and embraces America in all its turbulence and beauty.
Awake at the End
Awake at the End collects the poetic output of the first three poet laureates of Cleveland Heights (Ohio): Meredith Holmes, Loren Weiss, and Mary E. Weems.
Public Education and the Imagination-Intellect
Public Education and the Imagination-Intellect argues for re-thinking the thinking process and for urban education reform. Weems's work lives in the moment of creation. Her imagination-intellect theory chapters frame this book; she posits that the imagination and intellect are inextricably linked; that like Freire's architect all ideas are first imagined, then intellectually developed in an interconnected process that mirrors the blood's circulation through the body. The two plays and the collection of poems are rich, layered landscapes of African American culture and meanings. They lend themselves to multi-interpretation, co-performance, and co-ownership by each audience member who engages the work.
Working Hard for the Money:
America's Working Poor in Stories, Poems and Photos
(Bottom Dog Publishing 2002)
Contributors to this book come from all over the U.S., bringing to their writing diverse experiences involving community work or lived experience with social challenge. In her "Recipe for Wanda Coleman" contributor Coleman writes: "Take 18 years in the racist Los Angeles School System during the 50's-60's, add a thatch of hair that always goes back to Africa and a body that bursts all seams, stir in a tablespoon of allergic dermatitis, a pinch of honesty, a cup of chopped integrity and a half pint of Edgar Allen Poe." Contributors include Paul Allen, Mary E. Weems, Larry Smith, A.D. Winans, Victoria Rivas, and more.
White (Wick Poetry Chapbook Series)
(Kent State University Press 1997)
An anthology of energetic poems, which seek to provide a repartee with the difficult urban world of a gentle warrior.
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