D.Ellis

By: Nadia- www.thestraykitten.com

-"His haiku poems are evocative impressionistic and subtle, distilled into a few potent words."

Who is D. Ellis?- Part 1

By: Gabrielle Kappes- (urbanwritersmixtape)

Tonight at Shrine, somewhere between the Caribbean jams and scotch shooters–Mauricio, a regular who sips on Red Bull pitchers, pointed to a framed poem propped upon the bar and said, “Read this.” It was written by D. Ellis, and I wish I had snapped a photo.

Mauricio gave me D. Ellis’s business card that had his Twitter handle:

https://twitter.com/artbydellis

His Twitter poems have a light and airy feel, like a morning mist evaporating on bare shoulders & exposed arms on the first hot day of Summer.

“July- I held you so tight.. all through the night….until the morning…you left while I was sleeping…I can still feel you on my skin….”

“Storm- Gone but the evergreen trees remain bronze the sun shines upon it glistening in the air.. birds stare at it shaking their heads….”

“Honey In Harlem- James Brown is still alive in these streets..Even Coltrane played for me the other night…as i walked down Lenox…”

“Greyhound- Tears rolling down his face….looking out the window…selling coke back and forth…. from New York to Virginia"

Who are you D.Ellis?

D. Ellis Is- Part 2 (urbanwritersmixtape)

By Gabrielle Kappes-

Last week I received an answer to my question, “Who is D. Ellis?” By some twist of internet fate, D. Ellis read my post on our Mixtape and emailed me to share his gratitude. David Ellis is a teacher in Harlem and has composed over 3,000 poems. He posts poems on his Twitter almost daily. What a refreshing reminder that our Mixtape is living archive and conduit for connecting with other urban writers in NYC!

What I like most about Ellis’s poems is the knowledge they leave unsaid. The short verse has a haiku-like form: the vibrant images hang suspended from one another, and the last line envelopes the reader with aura of mystery. The ellipses act as holding places for the reader to catch her breath, a caesura that lets the concrete image evolve and disperse. The effervescence of his lines speaks to fleeting conceptions of time, place, and memory, where the written word becomes a catalyst for recalling other buried memories....