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Marlanda Dekine-Sapient Soul (born May 25, 1986, Greenville, SC) is a poet, author, and recording artist. Her poetry has been featured with USA Today, South Carolina Public Radio Walter Edgar’s Journal , TEDxGreenville , and the Free Verse Poetry Festival. Her poetry has been published with Flycatcher Journal (nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2015), Shuddhashar Magazine, Spark & Echo Arts , Spartanburg Magazine , South Strand News , Minerva Rising , and in the anthology, “Ecological Solidarities: Mobilizing Faith and Justice for an Entangled World” , published by Penn State University Press.

A social worker, referenced as an activist by many, Dekine has served children, family, and communities as they navigate unjust structural systems and heal from trauma. Her work has included offering therapy, mediation, forensic evaluations of children who may have experienced child abuse, and poetry performances at the Brighter Futures’ Conference for Child Abuse Prevention, the Children’s Trust Prevention Conference, the Together SC Summit, Rev. Barber’s Moral Revival, and more. She is the Founder of Speaking Down Barriers, a non-profit providing encounters that transform our life together across our human differences, using honest dialogue & spoken word poetry as its primary tools for healing & justice. She is also the Co-Founder of their youth program, Writers Well Youth Fellowship, a literary retreat for Black femme writers ages 14-19.

Early Life & Education
Born in Greenville, South Carolina, Dekine and her family relocated to her parent’s birth home, Plantersville, South Carolina, when she was six years old. A very shy child, Dekine performed hip-hop at her church at the age of 10, making music with her cousin and sharing it from the church stage during talent shows. She attended Georgetown County Schools, including Plantersville Elementary, the Harbor School for the Arts & Sciences (now closed), and Carvers Bay High School. She is a member of the first full-term graduating class of Carvers Bay High School in 2004.

Dekine returned to Greenville for college and graduated from Furman University in 2008 with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology. While there she began a poetry club called Poetic Noise, gathering students who wrote and loved poetry. The club produced self-published anthologies and continues to meet today. She was also 1/2 of the poetic duo, "Anointed Tongues". During this time, she also recorded "I Bring You Truth" on the university's campus. She took the stage name Sapient Soul while beginning to participate in poetry slams with the Upstate Poets of South Carolina and Southern Fried Poetry Slam through college and into her mid-20s.

Since 2011, she has hosted and organized community gatherings, including poetry workshops, dialogues, tournaments, and artist talks, gathering poets from across the South to share their voices for social and political transformation. After graduation, she worked in Greenville, South Carolina with the Continuum of Care for Emotionally Disturbed Children, Hospice Care of South Carolina, Marshall I. Pickens Behavioral Health Hospital, Furman University’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, Spartanburg County School District 7, and the Children’s Advocacy Center of Spartanburg, Cherokee, and Union counties. While working as a social worker and traveling to share poems, Dekine completed her Master’s of Social Work with University of South Carolina in 2011.

Current Life
Dekine published and produced “i am from a punch & a kiss” as an independent, multi-media project. It was released as a collection of poems in May 2017 and as an audiobook mixtape in June 2018. Since releasing the multi-media project, it has been included in curricula across the nation, including her graduate studies alma mater, University of South Carolina College of Social Work; at Wofford College; at Christian Theological Seminary in Indiana, and more. She is currently completing her Master of Fine Arts with New York University’s Low-Residency program in Paris. She has received awards specific to her contributions to the arts, community, ethical business, and humanities within communities across South Carolina.

Poetry & Music

 * Ecological Solidarities: Mobilizing Faith and Justice for an Entangled World, Penn State University Press, 2019
 * i am from a punch & a kiss, {unnamed}, 2017
 * The Moon, released December 2019 via Spotify, Apple Music, ITunes, Youtube, Soundcloud, etc.
 * Paris, released October 2019 via Spotify, Apple Music, ITunes, Youtube, Soundcloud, etc.
 * i am from a punch & a kiss, released May 2018 via Bandcamp
 * SOULidifying Borrowed Concepts, released April 2013 via Bandcamp
 * I Bring You Truth, released 2006 via trunk of Dekine's car & Furman Student Fair

Personal Life
Marlanda was born in Greenville, South Carolina to Vernetta & Tom Dekine. When she was two-years-old, she and her parents moved to Nashville, Tennessee where her twin sisters were born in 1988. The family moved to Georgetown, South Carolina, specifically Plantersville, to return to her parent’s birthplace and the land of their extended family where her youngest brother was born in 1996. She is the granddaughter of Elizabeth & Silas Dekine and Thelma & Rev. Frank Ford, Jr. Her grandmother, Thelma Ford, is living today.

Awards

 * SC Humanities, Fresh Voice of the Year Governor's Award, 2019
 * Emrys Poetry Foundation, Keller Cushing Freeman Scholar, 2019
 * Greenville Chamber of Commerce and the Riley Institute at Furman, Outstanding Nonprofit Award, 2017
 * Business & Professional Women of South Carolina, Woman of Accomplishment, 2017
 * Spartanburg Breakfast Business & Professional Women Club, Woman of Accomplishment, 2017
 * Spartanburg County Foundation, Mary L. Thomas Award for Civic Engagement, 2016
 * Atlantic Institute, Peace & Dialogue Award, 2016
 * TEDxGreenville, Performer & Speaker, 2016
 * Soul Sista Slam Atlanta, Grand Champion, 2014
 * Queen of the South, Greenville Slam Champion, 2012
 * Women of the Word Poetry Slam, Greenville Qualifying Champion, 2011