Former poet laureate of Belfast, Maine, Afrofuturist/Oro-shamanic poet and bass clarinetist Toussaint St. Negritude dazzles with this debut collection of poems, featuring an ensemble of cosmic tones the late Pulitzer Prize winning poet Gwendolyn Brooks once called “full of sweet sounds and surprises.” Through the inspiration of life, jazz, and nature, Mountain Spells is about the intrinsic clarity of emancipation, expressing all found intersections of what the author sees and experiences, and how this Black/queer/high-hat-wearing artist envisions the world through the lens of spirituality, the African diaspora, and nature as his home. Each poem, written in Vermont, expresses the whole cosmos of collective liberation. “I listened to the birds, to the sky, what the leaves were telling me,” says St. Negritude, and captured it all in improvisational, freeform, and musical poetry, lovely and changing as the seasons themselves.

MEET THE AUTHOR

Former poet laureate of Belfast, Maine, and 2024 nominee for the poet laureateship of Vermont, poet, bass clarinetist, and composer Toussaint St. Negritude conjures whole liberations in full tempo. His poetry has been published in Michigan Quarterly Review, Birchsong, Philadelphia Stories, Savannah Literary Journal, PoemCity, and the San Francisco Bay Guardian.

Originally from San Francisco, Toussaint has lived and broadly thrived across the African Diaspora, from the sacred mountains of Haiti, to the Coltrane District of North Philadelphia. He, along with bassist Gahlord Dewald, is the leader of the band Jaguar Stereo!, a free-form ensemble of his own poetry and improvisational jazz. His works have been widely published and recorded for over 40 years. On an alpine sanctuary facing east, Toussaint St. Negritude continues to thrive in the farthest elevations of Vermont's Northeast Kingdom. Mountain Spells is his first traditionally published volume of poetry. Visit www.toussaintstnegritude.com