02 / ABOUT ME
a life in many forms.
Poet, writer, preacher, public theologian, visual artist, arts organizer.
i came to gather.
i came to be found.
i came and made a home.
i came and waited til you got here.
i came and set a table for you.
i came and set an altar for offerings.
i came so that we have a place
as spiritual and creative practitioners to come together.
Marvin K. White is a Black, gay poet, preacher, public theologian, visual artist, and cultural organizer based in San Francisco. He serves as the full-time Minister of Celebration at Glide Memorial Church and holds a Master of Divinity from Pacific School of Religion.
His work moves through poetry, performance, found objects, teaching, spiritual practice, and the everyday art of bringing people together. Black imagination, queer life, ancestral memory, humor, desire, and possibility belong in the same room.
His four RedBone Press poetry collections are last rights, nothin’ ugly fly, our name be witness, and status. last rights and nothin’ ugly fly were nominated for Lambda Literary Awards. His creative world also includes Facebook Friends and Quantum Leaps and Sacred Ruptures.
A former member of the Pomo Afro Homos performance troupe, Marvin has performed nationally and internationally. He has led writing and creative arts workshops in youth spaces, Black gay communities, literary gatherings, faith communities, and social justice organizations.
He is a cofounder of B/GLAM—the Black Gay Letters and Arts Movement—and a Cave Canem fellow. He was the inaugural Public Theologian in Residence at First Church Berkeley in 2017–18 and participated in YBCA’s “What Does Equity Look Like?” fellowship.
What I want most
Thank you for visiting marvink.white.com. This site is dedicated to the various public creative, prophetic and social justice practices that I create, preach, collaborate in and organize, within you, and with you in mind-- my beloved community. It is my archive and my witness. You will see here what is percolating, what is brewing and what is brimming. I will be vulnerable and brave in front of you. What I want most of this site, is for your gifts to be activated. I hope that you will read or see or hear something here that will move you, trouble you til you have to respond, inspire you, or provoke you to speak your truth. If you are a lover of arts, consider supporting these efforts to bring art and a healing word to an aching world. Come on in. Keep your shoes on. Touch things. Speak to things and let them speak to you. And let me know what you feel, see, hear and need.
THE WORK, CONTINUING
Language. Objects. Spirit.
Room for what comes next.
At TendeSF, poetry and found objects meet a practice of tending. At MarvinKWhite.ai, imagination meets new creative tools. At Glide, celebration becomes a place to gather and a way to rehearse the world we seek.
Read the original biographical archive
A historical biography preserved from the original site. Roles and affiliations are described as they appeared there.
Poet, Writer, Preacher, Public Theologian, Visual Artist, Arts Organizer
Marvin K. White, MDiv, is currently the Full-Time Minister of Celebration at the historic Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco, CA. He is a graduate of the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, CA and the inaugural Public Theologian in Residence ('17-'18) at First Church Berkeley. Marvin is an ordained deacon at City of Refuge UCC. He was co-facilitator of the "Faith Leaders Round Table" at The Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society and was a recent recipient (’17-’18) of the YBCA Fellowship, “What Does Equity Look Like?”, a program that brought together creative citizens from across the Bay Area - artists and everyday people alike - to engage in a yearlong process of inquiry, dialogue, and project generation.
He is the author of four collections of poetry published by RedBone Press: Our Name Be Witness; Status; and the two Lammy-nominated collections last rights and nothin’ ugly fly. His poetry has been anthologized in The Road Before Us: 100 Black Gay Poets; My Brothers Keeper; Gents, Bad Boys and Barbarians: New Gay Writing; Things Shaped in Passing; Sojourner: Writing in the Age of AIDS; Bum Rush the Page; Role Call; and Think Again, as well as other local and national publications. He is the co-editor of If We Have to Take Tomorrow: HIV, Black Men & Same Sex Desire.
His poetry has been adapted for stage at San Francisco’s Theater Rhinoceros and he has performed his work himself at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts as a part of their 2014 BAN7 Festival. As a former member of the critically acclaimed theater troupe The Pomo Afro Homos’ he has performed nationally and internationally.
Beginning as a Teaching Artist for WritersCorps, he continues to lead creative arts and writing workshops for a range of audiences, from youth centers for runaway kids to black gay support groups to literary conference, faith communities and social justice organizations.
White is cofounder of B/GLAM (Black Gay Letters and Arts Movement), a Bay Area, California organization whose goal was to preserve, present and incubate black gay artistic expressions. He is a graduate of the national African-American poetry fellowship and organization, Cave Canem; and sits on the board of Fire & Ink, a national black LGBT writer’s organization. A public theologian and community-based artist, he is articulating a vision of social, prophetic and creative justice through his work as a poet, artist, teacher, facilitator, activist, community organizer, preacher, homemaker, cake baker, and Facebook Statustician.