Douglas Manuel's Trouble Funk is sharkskin and unfiltered cigs, blue-lit basements and sedans with wings, the bop and slow drag and every street corner where strangers lift their voices to make song. It's a preacher goodfootin' across the pulpit and blue screams from both sides of a closed door. Trouble Funk is the quintessential soundtrack for the era that scarred and blessed the best of us, it's a DJ spinning stanzas of fam, the trials of manhood, God's glory in the body, and the unquestioned ferocity of black love. As defined within its pages, Trouble Funk  "is funk. Is rock. Is blues. Is jazz. Is ragtime. Is work song. In short: is Black, always Black on both sides all the way down."

--Patricia Smith

Douglas Manuel’s Trouble Funk curates a compelling soundtrack for the lives of Damon and Denise, a couple living in Indiana from 1964 to 1987. This is a rich and original collection of documentary poetry, including artifacts of music, dress, and news––from Jheri curls and afros, bell bottoms, Pall Malls and roller rinks to the hostage crisis, the Klan, police brutality, drugs, and violence. With powerful rhythms and a multitude of vivid details, fragments, dialogue, and historical markers, Manuel bears clear-eyed and compassionate witness to hope and heartache, tragedy and reclamation.  Each poem is titled with a song and date, so you can be fully immersed in the experience, both reading and listening to the music. This is poetry that makes you care, poetry that: “Is funk. Is rock. Is blues. Is jazz. Is ragtime. Is work song. In short: is Black, always Black on both sides, all the way down.”

--Ellen Bass


In these stunning poems of love and longing, Douglas Manuel offers us richly textured lyrics inspired by three decades of Black music, refreshing nostalgic beats. This book is a playlist for Black joy and perseverance, each line smooth as Soul Train and studded with sonic delights. I will carry these playful, resonant poems with me--"lift and flit, lift and flit"--catching their sweet signal, like late-night radio in the wee hours.

--Kiki Petrosino

"In his breathtaking debut, Testify, Douglas Manuel charts the raw emotional complexities and the impossible daily reckonings that confront a young black man coming of age today in America. Faced at every turn with condescending, fixed assumptions about his 'proper' role in his community and culture, the speaker faces each indictment with a stunning and searing intelligence. Each powerful testimony in this collection stands as evidence of an eloquent and dramatic new voice in American poetry."

--David St. John

"In Douglas Manuel's Testify the act of witnessing is by turns burdensome and bittersweet, narrative and lyrical, ecstatic and irreverent. Here the holy words are the ones that offer no easy epiphanies yet grant us dazzling, off-kilter compassion and a strange, surprising grace. These potent poems testify to those ambivalent moments that might rend or right us, as when an interracial couple drive past a truck with a Confederate flag painted on its back windshield and from which a little boy turns to smile and wave: his 'blond hair // split down the middle like a Bible / left open to the Book of Psalms.'"

--Anna Journey, author of The Atheist Wore Goat Silk

A book of elegiac ambivalence, Testify's speaker often finds himself trapped between received binaries: black and white, ghetto and suburban, atheism and Catholicism. In many ways, this work is a Bildungsroman detailing the maturation of a black man raised in the crack-laden 1980s, with hip-hop, jazz, and blues as its soundtrack. Rendered with keen attention to the economic decline of the Midwest due to the departure of the automotive industry, this book portrays the speaker wrestling with his city's demise, family relationships, interracial love, and notions of black masculinity. Never letting anyone, including the speaker, off the hook, Testify refuses sentimentality and didacticism and dwells in a space of uncertainty, where meaning and identity are messy, complicated, and multivalent.

ABOUT ME

Douglas Manuel was born in Anderson, Indiana and now resides in Whittier, California. He received a BA in Creative Writing from Arizona State University, an MFA in poetry from Butler University, and a PhD in English Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Southern California. He is the author of two collections of poetry, Testify (2017) and Trouble Funk (2023). His poems and essays can be found in numerous literary journals, magazines, and websites, most recently Zyzzyva, Pleiades, and the New Orleans Review. He has traveled to Egypt and Eritrea with The University of Iowa's International Writing Program to teach poetry. A recipient of the Dana Gioia Poetry Award and a fellowship from the Borchard Foundation Center on Literary Arts, he is an assistant professor of English at Whittier College and teaches at Spalding University’s low-res MFA program.


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Writings

Poetry
Untitled: after Rachel McKibbens.
Red Hen
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"YOUR LOVE (MEANS EVERYTHING TO ME), 1981" and "ONE OF A KIND (LOVE AFFAIR), 1985"
the Verseville
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Are You Single?
New Orleans Review
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Cosmic Slop
Indianapolis Review
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Weak at the Knees
Indianapolis Review
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Best of My Love, One Nation Under a Groove, Dazz, Make Up Your Mind, and Get up to Get Down
Konch Magazine
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Flashlight
Moria
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Slippin' into Darkness
Moria
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Fire
Moria
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My Brother Smoked Rocks With a Qur’an at His Feet
San Francisco Chronicle (Datebook)
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Loud Looks
Vandal Poem of the Day
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Testify
Poetry Foundation
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Washing Palms
Poetry Foundation
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Feels Like Rain | The First Time I See My Father's Blood Cleaned
Figure 1
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Whose Little Boy Are You? | Little Fires Left by Travelers
Superstition [review]
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Heading Down | Goodnight Baby
New Orleans Review
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Entreaties
MMM online, vol XI, 2014
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Prose
The Nadir of the Black American Experience – A Review of Lester Graves Lennon’s Lynchings: Postcards from America
The Los Angeles Review
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The Annotated Nightstand
Lit Hub
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Of Funk, Fathers, Sons, and Second Books
Good River Review
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For Every Lie I Unlearn: Ode to a First Born Due (After Emily Dickinson)
Red Canary
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LA COVID Letter (Mine is below Victoria Chang's)
Zyzzyva
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Requiem for a Nest: L.A. Blueswoman Wanda Coleman
Spalding MFA Blog
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Three Poems of the Last Decade for the New Decade
Spalding MFA Blog
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Where Do Poems Come From?
Spalding MFA Blog
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If We Just Listen, We Can All Hear Ghosts
Poets & Writers
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Of Aging, Blackness, Lies, and Memory
Spalding MFA Blog
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Book Review: The Book of Lamenting By Lory Bedikian
The Los Angeles Review
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In the Between
Superstition Review
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The Trenchant Is Poetic: Notes On “Washing Palms”
North American Review
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Punchlist, Week Of 7/9/12
Punchel's
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“A poem is a type of prayer…”
Butler Blog
Read Here

Media

Featured

Douglas Manuel Interviewed by Natalie Solmer for the Indianapolis Review

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Poetry L.A. Interview with Genevieve Kaplan

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Douglas Manuel Interviewed by Ruth Madievsky for Bomb Magazine

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Douglas Manuel Reading at Red Hen Press Spring Salon

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Trouble Funk Conversation with Lynnell Edwards for the THINK HUMANITIES podcast

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Poetry Reading for Larksong Writers Place for Poetry Month

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Poetry reading with Afaa Weaver and Lynne Thompson with music from Dr. Ray Briggs

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Poetry L.A. Interview with Cynthia Guardado

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Poetry.LA Interview with Ron L. Dowell.

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Praise, Even in Fallibility: A Conversation with Dexter L. Booth and Douglas Manuel

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Poetry.LA interview with Ruth Madievsky

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Poetry.LA Interview with Diana Arterian

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Poetry.LA Interview with Michelle Brittan Rosado

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Poetry.LA interview with Will Alexander

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Conversation with Rebecca Byrkit about Testify

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Poetry Salon Podcast Series with Tresha Faye Haefner

I host a serial podcast discussing poetry with Tresha at the Poetry Salon
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Conversation with Dexter L. Booth and F. Douglas Brown

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Conversation with Jason Schneiderman and Ron Koertge

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Conversation with Ricardo Cortez Cruz

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Conversation with Jason Schneiderman and Ellen Bass

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Douglas Manuel Poetry Reading with Felicia Zamora

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Interviewed by Natalie Solmer at the Indianapolis Review

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Interviewed by Emmanuel Jones at the Quaker

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Douglas Manuel Reading and Panel for Gold Line/Ricochet Editions: Place, Body, Memory

I start reading at about 31:27, and there is a Q&A afterwards.
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Douglas Manuel Interview and Reading for Poetry.LA

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Black Voices: Kathryn H. Ross and Douglas Manuel in Conversation on What it Means to Be Black in America

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Black Lives Matter: Writers Talk Back

Red Hen Press and the USC Dornsife Department of English will host a virtual roundtable conversation titled Black Lives Matter: Writers Talk Back, featuring authors and poets Ishmael Reed, Danzy Senna, and Douglas Manuel moderated by Dana Johnson.
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Red Hen Press Poetry Hour: The Broad Stage at Home

I go on a little after the 41 minute mark.
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Douglas Manuel Reading at Los Angeles Writers Resist 2020

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25 Year Anniversary of Red Hen Press Article

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Douglas Manuel Interview for The Poetry Saloncast

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Douglas Manuel Interviewed by Moira Literary Magazine

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Douglas Manuel Reading Hillsides Student Work and His Poem"Heading Down"

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Douglas Manuel Reading "This Poem Isn't Black" at the Poetry Circus

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Douglas Manuel Reading "Entreaties" at Method and Mystery Book Launch

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Douglas Manuel interviews Percival Everett

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"Are You Ready to Help the Parents of this Child in their Duty as Christian Parents?"

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Archive

Douglas Manuel on being a Sensitivity Reader

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International Writing Program Eritrea Article 2

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International Writing Program Eritrea Article 1

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The International Writing Program Lines & Spaces 2018 Egypt/Eritrea Tour

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PEN America Podcast Interview

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Windward School Article about Douglas Manuel Teaching

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Fear No Lit. Tour Grind: Douglas Manuel Interview

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IBPA article: Getting There: Why Indie Publishers are Well-Positioned to Satisfy the Need for Diverse Voices

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Douglas Manuel on Poets Cafe

Audio and full transcript of my Poets Cafe interview.
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IBPA Benjamin Franklin Poetry Award Acceptance Speech

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Enclave To-Read Pile

Some of my must read books for April 2018.
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Poets Cafe KPFK Interview 2/4/18

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Eugene Weekly Best of 2017 List for Poetry (Testify on page 17)

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Daily Trojan Interview (Summer 2017)

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KMSU Weekly Reader Interview (Spring 2017)

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Writers Resist: Los Angeles (I go on at 1:28:32ish in the video)

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Douglas Manuel interviews the poet Ginny Wiehardt

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Celebrating Collaboration

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Events

Upcoming

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Past

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