Collaborative Poetry Writing Project
The Black Matter is Life: Poetry for Engagement and Overcoming program will also offer the community an opportunity to come together to create twelve-line poems inspired by one of the poems selected for discussion at the online events.
A community is defined as a family, a group of friends, a library or school staff, town employees, or a collection of individuals. We also welcome “communities” of one—you write all 12 lines. Go for it!
A reading of the collaborative poem will conclude each event. This community engagement project will run concurrently with online discussions. For more information on this component of the program please contact our partners:
November 18 – Rye Public Library, Andrew Richmond < arichmond@ryepubliclibrary.org >
December 9 – Keene Public Library, Gail Zachariah < gzachariah@ci.keene.nh.us>
January 21 – Nashua Public Library, Carol Eyman <Carol.Eyman@nashualibrary.org>
Program Description
To begin this exploration of the vast diversity within African American poetic tradition, UNH professors Reginald Wilburn and Dennis Britton will facilitate three online conversations. Each discussion deconstructs four poems grouped by themes. Conversations will center these poems within the context of the African American literary tradition, their cultural heritage, the traditions they encompassed, and the relevance this tradition has to us today. The series will also explore the question, “Why does African American Poetry matter?”
The Black Matter Is Life: Poetry for Engagement and Overcoming
A Virtual Poetry Reading & Discussion
Join us this winter for a virtual series of public conversations entitled, The Black Matter is Life: Poetry for Engagement and Overcoming. In this series, we will explore and discuss the rich tradition and innovation found in African American poetry.
Poetry is a powerful art form, one that offers profound insights into what it means to be human. Through the creative, succinct, and melodious use of language, poets render into words their joys, their challenges, their vulnerabilities, and their discoveries, thus providing shape and meaning to the human connection and shared emotional experience.
In the wake of our nation’s current unrest, this program is designed to build bridges across the racial divide by introducing the audience to the writings of a number of African American poets whose work has shone a light on a rich cultural heritage that has often gone unexplored. This program asks the audience to consider how African American poetry provides tools for healing our nation’s deep racial wounds.
Additional Info:
ABOUT THE POETS
STATEMENT OF INTENT
POETRY STUDY GUIDE
POETRY EVENT FLYER (PDF)
Events:
November 18 | 5:00 PM
Signifyin(g) on a Tradition
Featuring guest poet Lynne Thompson
Phillis Wheatley—Imagination
Lawrence Dunbar—When Malindy Sings
Langston Hughes—Harlem & Theme for English B
Sonia Sanchez—Haiku and Tanka for Harriet Tubman
Read Rye Public Library Community Poem by Mimi White, Lisa Houde, Jess Ryan & Andrew Richmond here Helicon
December 9 | 5:00 PM
In Protest
Featuring guest poet Patricia Smith
James Weldon Johnson—The Creation
Audre Lorde—Litany for Survival
Danez Smith—dear white america
Elizabeth Alexander— Ars Poetica #1,002: Rally
Read Keene Public Library Community Poem by Rodger Martin, Skye Stephenson, Linda Warren, and Gail Zachariah here
January 21 | 5:00 PM
Love, Love, Love
Featuring guest poet Jericho Brown
George Moses Horton—The Lover’s Farewell
Gwendolyn Brooks—Lovely Love
Nikki Giovanni—Resignation
Jericho Brown—Like Father
Read the Community Poem by Roy Goodman from Poetry as Spiritual Practice
group at the Unitarian Universalist Church here
Guest Poets
Jericho Brown is author of the The Tradition (Copper Canyon 2019), for which he won the Pulitzer Prize. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, and the National Endowment for the Arts, and he is the winner of the Whiting Award. Brown’s first book, Please (New Issues 2008), won the American Book Award. His second book, The New Testament (Copper Canyon 2014), won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. His third collection, The Tradition won the Paterson Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. His poems have appeared in The Bennington Review, Buzzfeed, Fence, jubilat, The New Republic, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, TIME magazine, and several volumes of The Best American Poetry. He is the director of the Creative Writing Program and a professor at Emory University.Program Facilitators
Dr. Dennis Britton is an Associate Professor of English and the University of New Hampshire, Durham where he teaches courses on Shakespeare and medieval and Renaissance British Literature. He is the author of Becoming Christian: Race, Reformation, and Early Modern English Romance (2014) and coedited with Melissa Walter Rethinking Shakespeare Source Study: Audiences, Authors, and Digital Technologies (2018). Dr. Britton is a member of the Boards of Directors of New Hampshire Humanities and Black Heritage Trail, NH.
Dr. Reginald A. Wilburn is an associate professor of English specializing in African American literature and culture, Milton, and intertextuality studies at the University of New Hampshire, Durham. His monograph, Preaching the Gospel of Black Revolt: Appropriating Milton in Early African American Literature is the first work of literary criticism to theorize African Americans’ subversive reception of John Milton, England’s epic poet of liberty. A former U.S. Marine, Dr. Wilburn is an alumnus of the Institute for the Recruitment of Teachers (Phillips Academy) where he serves as faculty and curriculum coordinator. Dr. Wilburn has received two UNH teaching award and mentors students in the Office of Multicultural Student Affairs.
Series Sponsors
