“I want memory to be as whole as possible. Not just what people did, but how they did it. I want to understand why they did it. I want to know who they were so I can know who I am.”
— Lucille Clifton
photo credit Rae Leone Allen
simóne j banks is a writer poet interested in listening. Lately, her writing has immersed itself infinitely in the study of Black ecologies, with a focus on land, water-bodies, air and plant life including African American herbalism and the haiku.
She is a 2024 Woody Barlow Poetry Contest winner, a 2024 Hurston/Wright Writer-in-Residence and a 2024 Courage To Write finalist for The de Groot Foundation. Her work has appeared in the Grist: Imagine 2200 Climate Fiction, Santa Fe Writers Project, About Place Journal/Black Earth Institute, eMerge Journal and/or is forthcoming in Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora and Root Work Journal. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Louisiana State University, where she earned the William Jay Smith Thesis Award in poetry. She is writing her debut collection of poetry, ‘continuum’ a poetry + photography project that seeks to restage, reimagine and restore the seen and unseen relationship between the Black body and nature.
Published Writings
2025
Grist: Imagine 2200 Climate Fiction
Title: The Seed Dropper
About Place Journal, Careful/Care-full Collaboration, Volume VIII, Issue III
Title: Southern Monarchs
Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora, Issue 51.2
Title: Let Us Begin Here
eMerge Journal, September 2025
Title: The Crystal Bathhouse on Block 66
eMerge Journal, November 2025
Title: What to Notice About the Changing Earth
2024
Winner of Woody Barlow Poetry Contest, 2024
Title: In a Swampy Area South of Morgan City
Root Work Journal, Between The Forest + The Trees volume 2, issue 2, 2024
Title: What does the exposure of a violated body yield?
2023
Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora, issue 49.1, 2023
Title: blacksound/\verdantdreams
eMerge Journal, Spring 2023
Title: The Rupture/The Silence
2022
About Place Journal/Black Earth Institute, Spring 2022
Title: between another hour of freedom
eMerge Journal, Winter 2022
Titles: December and Everything After
2021
Santa Fe Writers Project, Winter 2021
Title: A Nightmare Called Tonight
Upcoming Events & Classes
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Rewilding: Conjuring Our Knowledge of the Natural
July 20
a 1-day eco-poetics workshop at the U.S. Botanical Gardens | 10 - 3pm
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Writing for Social Justice: Activism, Advocacy, and Art
July 17
a Zoom panel presented by Hurston/Wright Foundation | 6:30 - 7:30pm
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The Land is the Body
July 8 - 12
a five-day class on eco-poetics and memory