Please enjoy this Summer Salon Series episode of Breaking Form Selects: Tommye Blount.

Support Breaking Form by reviewing the show on Apple Podcasts here.

Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE is available from Bridwell Press. James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.

Notes:

Tommye Blount was born and raised in Detroit. He holds an MFA from Warren Wilson College and is the author of Fantasia for the Man in Blue (Four Way Books, 2020), a finalist for the National Book Award, and the chapbook What Are We Not For (Bull City Press, 2016). Blount is the recipient of scholarships and fellowships from Kresge Arts in Detroit and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. In 2023, he received a Whiting Award in Poetry. A Cave Canem Fellow, Blount lives in Novi, Michigan.

Visit Tommye's website: https://www.tommyeblount.com/home

Buy the book Fantasia for the Man in Blue from Four Way Books.

Poems we mention include:

"Fantasia for the Man in Blue" (one of four title poems in the book). Watch Tommye read this poem here.

"Leroy Auditions for the Fame School"

"Ku Klux Klan Robe and Hood, Circa 1925" in Massachusetts Review

"Palmer Park"

"Karl Lagerfeld's Line of Beauty"

Read two poems by Tommye in Four Way Review here.

See Tommye read his poem "Grand Dragon" at the Whiting Awards here (~1 min)

Watch Leroy Johnson's audition in Fame here!

Read this interview with Tommye in Adroit Journal