Dr. Darius Phelps

“This collection understands love as labor. As spellwork. As resistance. It understands motherhood— not only biological, but communal, ancestral, chosen— as a site of divine power.“ It is this tenderness that permeates Phelps’s ode to his mother, this nuance that offers the context that’s needed to see her full facet, from childhood to grown. Only from within this deep well of empathy is he able to paint whole cloth a picture of the woman who raised him; so wrapped up he’s been in his role as her son. The Holy Ghost Lives In Her Laugh tucks this cherished in her own surroundings and stands back to marvel; at the strength of Black women, the power of mothers, and the stubborn determination of one little girl. Phelps arrives back here, still kneeling, still reverent, eyes fixed on the hands that built him a childhood from nothing, with no example; the lips that sing god’s love, laugh her love—unwavering still. kithbooks.com/shop/p/inherlaugh Release Date: April 30 ISBN: 987-1-964932-30-9 100 pages

Met with @dr.dphelps in November after a long week of teaching. I thought it’d be a quick interview, but months later our conversation is still going. Idk if anything my Friday-addled high school teacher brain had to say made much sense, but I’m so glad for Darius’ friendship. He always has way more to say about my poems than I do haha. You can read his great questions and my serviceable answers in the new issue of @tupelo_quarterly , along with three poems from The Ninth Island. Btw I’m about to be in Baltimore, mostly at the aquarium tho 🤙🐡

My God’s Been Silent — my debut collection — is officially up for pre-order and is coming out next Spring! To see this book make its way into the world, after years of grief, healing, and prayer on the page, feels nothing short of a blessing. Thank you to everyone who has held me, pushed me, and believed in the power of this work. I can’t wait for you to hold these poems in your hands. A special shoutout to @artjkim for this amazing cover! 🙏🏽 🥂 💜

Join us next Tuesday for The Shape of What Remains, an intimate evening of poetry that brings together Darius Phelps (@dr.dphelps , Andrew Chi Keong Yim (@bootcutkhakis ), and Kyle Carrero Lopez (@kylecarrerolopez ). At the center of the evening is the debut of The Holy Ghost Lives In Her Laugh, Phelps’s latest collection via @kithbooks that traces the sacred echoes of family, faith, and loss. Here, laughter becomes more than joy—it becomes presence, a way of naming what remains when absence refuses to be silent. Together, these voices create a space that is both tender and unflinching—where silence is honored, memory is given breath, and reading becomes an act of witnessing. RSVP using the link in bio!

HAPPY The Holy Ghost Lives in Her Laugh RELEASE DAY!! In this love letter to mothers, to Black women, to the woman that raised him, @drdphelps.bsky.social gives thanks, and shows grace, for an unconditional love born of tinder and flame. kithbooks.com/shop/p/inherlaugh

Family doesn’t necessarily have to mean a blood bond.🏡 @dr.dphelps Follow @thisishomebound for more! #homebound #buildingrelationships #feelinghome #love

Friday, we opened the box containing my second “The Holy Ghost Lives In Her Laugh”—courtesy of @kithbooks 🙌🏽 I’m so used to celebrating things like this alone. It feels innate at this point—quietly. A quick text. Then immediately back to work. It’s been my life for a very long time. Lately, I’ve been trying to unlearn that. To let joy be witnessed. To let someone stand in it with me. Not sure I said everything I meant in the moment, but I know this: I’m proud of this book. And it wouldn’t exist in the form it does today without @bootcutkhakis . He’s been seeing the work—and me—clearly since the beginning. I’m so grateful for Andrew and our friendship Still learning I don’t have to hold moments like this alone. 💜🙏🏽 Truly—thank you all for the love you’ve shown and continue to show me with these two roll outs. Book drops 4/30 and tour announcement #comingsoon‼️ Much love, D

When I first came across Herok’s (@herok )work via @civilart.nyc , it stopped me—not just visually, but spiritually. There was something in the texture, the layering, the boldness—a refusal to be quiet—that felt like the same language I’d been trying to write my way toward. The Holy Ghost Lives in Her Laugh has always been about presence, about the sacred showing up in unexpected places: in grief, in memory, in the women who raised us, in the laughter that survives what should have broken us. I knew the cover couldn’t just represent the book—it had to hold it. So I reached out not with a fully formed vision, but with a feeling—fragments, language, pulse—and what Herok created wasn’t just a cover, but an interpretation of spirit, a translation of breath into image, a visual altar. This is what happens when art meets art with honesty, when you trust someone with the intangible. I’m grateful for this collaboration—for the care, the intention, the way this cover doesn’t just introduce the book…it speaks before I do. Pre-order link in bio! 🖤🙏🏽 #poetry #poetrycommunity #poetofinstagram

“This collection understands love as labor. As spellwork. As resistance. It understands motherhood— not only biological, but communal, ancestral, chosen— as a site of divine power.“ It is this tenderness that permeates Phelps’s ode to his mother, this nuance that offers the context that’s needed to see her full facet, from childhood to grown. Only from within this deep well of empathy is he able to paint whole cloth a picture of the woman who raised him; so wrapped up he’s been in his role as her son. The Holy Ghost Lives In Her Laugh tucks this cherished in her own surroundings and stands back to marvel; at the strength of Black women, the power of mothers, and the stubborn determination of one little girl. Phelps arrives back here, still kneeling, still reverent, eyes fixed on the hands that built him a childhood from nothing, with no example; the lips that sing god’s love, laugh her love—unwavering still. kithbooks.com Release Date: April 30 ISBN: 978-1-964932-30-9 100 pages Advance Praise for The Holy Ghost Lives In Her Face: Dr. Darius Phelps' new collection The Holy Ghost Lives in Her Laugh is a love letter to Black women. It is all ode & reverence, all heart & wisdom. This work holds within its pages a blueprint for survival; what to do when the wilderness (was) kinder / than the dinner table and how to endure when you've inherited the ache. So many moments in this work made me tremble with recognition, from its dedication page all the way to the last line. Phelps is tender & miraculous in his insistence of love, of worship. Reminding us that the sun rises each morning stupid and golden /and forgiving but we must rise alongside it too. When he writes: I didn't always have language for the way love survives violence that is the beginning & that beginning is balm. -Yesenia Montilla, Author of The Pink Box & Muse Found in a Colonized Body

In the newest @tupelo_quarterly , the brilliant and generous @dr.dphelps and I had a conversation about poetry, art, longing, the body, and more, and I’m full of love and gratitude for the care with which Darius read my work. In the issue (available online) are seven of my poems, five interspersed in our conversation and two more as Editors’ Selections. You can see all of it at the link my bio. Thank you, Darius, @kristina.marie.darling , @tiffany.troy , and everyone else at TQ!

this interview w @dr.dphelps for @tupelo_quarterly was such a blessing—grateful for the precise, illuminating questions & the graceful space in which to answer them. thank you for the invite & the witnessing. you’re one of one. thoroughly enjoyed the conversation & exploring the intersections of our work. “There are conversations that don’t simply inform us—they reorient us. Conversations that pull us back to the marrow of why we teach, why we write, why we keep insisting on worlds where every child and every family can breathe a little easier. My time with Phil SaintDenisSanchez was one of those conversations. When I first encountered Phil’s work—his poetic lens, his devotion to communities pushed to the margins, the way he defines justice not as punishment but as presence—I understood that this interview had to be more than a dialogue. It had to be a witnessing. His art isn’t crafted from detachment; it is built from living inside the fractures of this world and still believing in our capacity to remake it. Phil does not hide from the truth. He meets it with tenderness, rigor, and a clarity that refuses to look away. … His practice is not disciplinary—it is devotional. It recognizes that the body can be archive, ritual, instrument, and a sanctuary all at once. Yet, for all the ache carried in his work, there is also possibility. Phil creates from a lineage—ancestral, cultural, communal—that survived by insisting on softness in a world that demanded hardness. He writes and organizes with an eye toward the future, imagining himself into the lineage of ancestors who believed that freedom is a birthright, not a privilege. Our conversation moves through the intricacies of teaching, the politics of visibility, the exhaustion and wonder of enacting change and justice within institutional structures, and the relentless hope required to believe in freer worlds. Phil’s work reminds us that justice is not theoretical—it is a practice of love. It is the slow, necessary, sacred labor of returning people to themselves.“ -Dr. Darius Phelps

RE: JUKE JOINT THEOLOGY + BLACK FEMME POETICS Anyone following my theology work knows the work of Black poets and Black cultural producers saved my faith when the theologies conservative fundamentalism taught me failed me as they fail so many of us. The cruelty with which we are taught to consider our flesh, heart, and desires is a specific kind of spiritual violence for Black people whose flesh, heart, and desires are already surveilled, policed, and subjected to violence. Few people’s work gives me the spiritual permission Brittany’s does. And I hate to say that I need permission “grown as I am? Grown as I am”. But Brittany always turns me back to myself; to my griefs and joys and desires and prayers and and and. Anywho, I told @brittanyerogers about 6 months ago that I had been lecturing on her work for the better part of a year. I been telling her for years she is my works cited. She is the canon. Thank you @tupelo_quarterly (special shout out to @dr.dphelps ) for publishing my review of @brittanyerogers Good Dress ❤️ Full essay is available in my bio!