Martheaus
writes poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. He is a teacher, editor, and hot sauce enthusiast based in Washington, D.C.
He is the author of The Grace of Black Mothers (available through Trio House Press).
New Poem!
Wasteland Review
IT'S A BOOK!
IT'S A BOOK!
Martheaus’ debut poetry collection
Interviews
Fish Barrel Review
Trio House Press Substack
Chatterbox!
Audio
This Mama is Lit! (podcast)
Virtual Readings
Background
Martheaus Perkins was born to a single mother in Center, Texas. After a childhood in and out of homes in Houston, he graduated from Stephen F. Austin State University as a first-generation student.
He is the recipient of the Robert Creeley Memorial Award judged by John Keene, the President’s Award by Voices, the GMU Rinehart Fiction Award, and the Robert Raymond Scholarship. He currently teaches Creative Writing at St. Albans School in D.C.
The name “Martheaus” is a collection of each woman who raise him: “Mar-” for his grandmother’s nickname, “-Thea-” for his mother’s name, and “-us” for his big aunties.
Kind Words
Perkins’ formal play and aesthetic daring, social critique and political engagement, and assured skill and fearlessness at going where these poems must go herald an important new talent!
—John Keene, author of Punks, winner of the National Book Award for Poetry
This story was entirely original, both a character tale and a heartbreaking story of forgiveness and compassion. And it was told through a novel approach that extended far beyond any sense of gimmickry; rather, it seemed as if this was the only way the story could be told. Lovely and fulfilling.
—Ed Aymar, author of When She Left
In Martheaus Perkins’s The Grace of Black Mothers, we find a bold new voice heralding the fraught ways we enter the world. Here, there are poems for grandmothers, martyrs, and the missing, those taken and those barely saved. Brimming with found forms and ingenious genres—wild scripts, letters, erasures and modern-age technologies—this book resurrects the dead and forgives the living. In its elegies and reclamations, homage and hunger, the lies are as wondrous as the truth, all huddled up under each other, like every child under the keen eye of his mother. Inventive and brazen, these poems will make anyone sit up and take notice.
—Remica Bingham-Risher, author of Soul Culture: Black Poets, Books, and Questions That Grew Me Up and Room Swept Home
