Ama Codjoe
Visiting Poet
Ama Codjoe’s 2022 debut, Bluest Nude (Milkweed Editions), winner of the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, was described by Ada Limón as “sensual, sound-driven, and brimming with a necessary truth…pulsating with both grief and beauty.” Codjoe’s other work includes 2020’s Blood of the Air (Northwestern University Press), winner of the Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize.
Codjoe is a multigenre artist, both poet and dancer, and the poems of Bluest Nude frequently engage her dancer’s sense of body and motion. In a poem dedicated to choreographer Pina Bausch, Codjoe observes the creative expression of dancers at work: “With their bodies, they made another music.” In an interview with the Yale Review, Codjoe speaks about the challenge and necessity of utilizing one art form to render another: “Art…becomes a part of me. Sometimes, this means I can’t write about it, and other times that I can’t not write about it. This is true for paintings, collage, photography, sculpture, assemblage, film, and theater. Ekphrasis in my practice includes all kinds of art.”
The recipient of many honors, including fellowships from the Rona Jaffe Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, Codjoe was also appointed as the second poet-in-residence at the Guggenheim Museum. Currently, Codjoe is the 2025–27 Bonderman Assistant Professor of the Practice in Literary Arts at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.
Codjoe’s reading will be followed by a conversation with Alexis Callender in Weinstein Auditorium in Wright Hall on Tuesday, November 10 at 7 p.m. Free and open to the public. Livestream also available on the BDPC YouTube page.