About Beneath My Body Armor: An Elegy

What began as a private journey to archive the fragments of his youth for his then absent mother has turned into a meditation and a ritual for wholeness. Beneath my body Armor: An Elegy, is a 2023 book-length series of lyric and percussive poems by American poet David Lawrence Glover. Beneath my body Armor is a collection of observations, revelations, and reflections on black life and love that spans two decades. This debut book of poetry is broken into six sections that range from deeply personal familial accounts, to love songs, raw emotional laments, and direct excerpts from dreams. These poems ring with extraordinary justice--at once melancholic, then monstrous, vulnerable, exposing, and at last like a wound; healing--in a collective portrait of a child once neglected, now a man finding safety and sanctuary within.

David Glover is an actor, poet, playwright and director from Philadelphia. He is an artist drawn to telling needed stories that press at the potent roots of trauma and healing. His artistic body of work centers identity, history, and home with a focus on the complexity of Black life, love and liberation. His debut book of poetry, Beneath My Body Armor, was published August 2023. This collection spans two decades in a series of lyric and percussive poems that range from deeply personal familial accounts, to love songs, raw emotional laments, and direct excerpts from dreams. He holds a BA in Theater from Temple University and has a passion for horticulture and pottery. He is an educator, US Army Veteran and lover of creative expression. He resides in a lush plant filled apartment in Brooklyn.