Primarily known for her live performances, Morris has written ten books (as of 2021) and has been heavily anthologized as a writer in multiple genres. She emerged as a poet, performer and writer from the
Lower East Side poetry scene in the early 1990s. She became known as a local poet in the "slam" scene of the
Nuyorican Poets Cafe in
New York City, New York, and eventually made the 1993 Nuyorican Poetry Slam team, the same year she won the
Nuyorican Grand Slam Championship. She competed in the 1993
National Poetry Slam held that year in San Francisco with other poets from the Nuyorican team. Morris also won the "national haiku slam" that year and her interest in the form lead her to Asia to research poetic forms and cultures from the region in 1998. She has been a member of the MLA (
Modern Language Association),
Associated Writing Programs, The Shakespeare Society and The Shakespeare Forum. She has performed at
Lincoln Center,
St. Mark's Poetry Project,
CBGB, the
92nd Street Y,
Lollapalooza,
South by Southwest,
The Whitney Museum,
MoMA, Albertine,
The New Museum,
Centre Pompidou (Paris), Centre for Creative Arts(Durban),
Victoria and Albert Museum, Queensland Poetry Festival (
Brisbane,
Melbourne) and many other regional, national, and international venues. Morris's work is embraced by slam and performance poets, as well as the Language Poets, a contemporary poetic avant-garde. She is featured, for example, on
Charles Bernstein's
Close Listening radio program, "PennSound". and was featured at a 2008 conference on Conceptual Poetics alongside Bernstein,
Marjorie Perloff,
Craig Dworkin and others. She received the
Creative Capital Performing Arts award in the year 2000. In addition to being an experimental poet, Morris writes poetry in conventional and nonce forms. Morris is known as a
sound artist and specialist in
sound poetry, as well as an occasional theatrical performer. She was an early collaborator with
Ralph Lemon for his Geography Trilogy. Her work was featured in the 2002
Whitney Biennial. Morris has taught in several institutions of higher education. She is the first tenured African-American poet of the
Iowa Writers' Workshop after serving as the program's inaugural distinguished visiting professor of poetry. ==Creative and academic fellowships==