Black Poetry after the Black Arts Movement

[by Meredith Wiggins]

Some of the biggest names in African American poetry will converge on KU this summer when the Project on the History of Black Writing hosts a two-week institute on the subject of Black Poetry after the Black Arts Movement.

And HBW hopes that you'll be a part of it.

Sponsored by a $156,000 grant from the National Endowment on the Humanities, the residential institute will be held July 19 through August 1. The NEH Summer Scholars, a group of 25 college and university teachers selected to take part, will join more than two dozen scholars to study how Black poetry both reflects and impacts social change.

For more information about the institute and about how to apply, follow the jump!



Summer Scholars will have the chance to study Black poetry from the 1960s onward with poets and scholars including Tyehimba Jess, Harryette Mullin, Kevin Young, HBW Founder Maryemma Graham, and many others.

The first week of the institute will be led by Howard Rambsy II, a professor at South Illinois University, and will focus on "The Demographics and Production of Contemporary Black Poetry." The second week will be led by poet Evie Shockley and will focus on "Contemporary Black Poetry and Form." (For a more detailed overview of events, check out this schedule.)

Applications to take part in Black Poetry after the Black Arts Movement as one of the 25 NEH Summer Scholars are due March 2, 2015, either by mail or e-mail. Read more about the eligibility guidelines and application requirements here.

Additionally, the grant will support a series of public webinars in fall 2015 with poets including Sonia Sanchez and Nikky Finney, among others.

Black Poetry after the Black Arts Movement is the second institute in the Don't Deny My Voice series, which supported an institute on Reading and Teaching African American Poetry in the summer of 2013. It is the 15th NEH grant that HBW has received in its more than 30 years of existence.