Annual Poetry Festival
10th Annual ASU Poetry Festival
November 6-8, 2016
Albany State University celebrates its 10th Annual Poetry Festival. The theme for
this year’s festival is “Testimonial” and is borrowed from Rita Dove’s poem by the
same title from her 1999 collection titled On the Bus with Rosa Parks. Like Dove’s poem, which speaks to maturation of a child’s thought process, the poetry
festival has undergone tremendous growth and development, culminating in increased
local, state and national visibility since its introduction in 2006. The past ten
years have witnessed visits and performances of some of our nation’s leading poets
and writers. Poets such as Eugene Redmond (2011), Gloria Wade Gayles (2011), Sonia
Sanchez (2012), Haki Madhubuti (2012), Jericho Brown (2012), DaMaris Hill (2012),
Amiri Baraka (2013), Pearl Cleage (2013), Thomas Sayers Ellis (2013), Mariahdessa
Ekere Tallie (2013), Nikki Giovanni (2014), Nikky Finney (2014), Frank X Walker (2014),
Lita Hooper (2014), Hoke Glover (2014), Natasha Trethewey (2015), Jessica Care Moore
(2015), Sharan Strange (2015), David Mills (2015), C. Liegh McInnis (2015) and Madeleine
Le Cesne (2015) are but a small sampling of the collective of powerful and talented
voices that have shared with our local and campus communities.
In the spirit of Sankofa, we understand that our future is built upon reflecting on
and celebrating our pasts. This year, the festival will offer an historic gaze over
significant movements and persons while also promoting future developments in poetry.
There will be a flurry of activities from poetry performances by some of the nation’s
leading poets and writers, special readings, discussion circles, panels and poetry
workshops. This year’s festival will be a celebration of poetry in its highest form.
Invited artists include: Kwame Dawes, Chasity Hale, De’John Hardges, Douglass Kearney,
Kalamu ya Salaam, and L. Lamar Wilson.
For more information, contact the program coordinators:
Dr. Jeffrey Mack: (229) 500-2197
jeffrey.mack@asurams.edu
2016 Poetry Festival Poets and Writers
Kwame Dawes
Born in Ghana in 1962, Kwame Dawes spent most of his childhood in Jamaica. As a poet, he is profoundly influenced by the rhythms and textures of the country, citing in a recent interview his “spiritual, intellectual, and emotional engagement with reggae music.” His book Bob Marley: Lyrical Genius (2007) remains the most authoritative study of the lyrics of Bob Marley. He is the author of over a dozen books, including his most recent collection of poetry City of Bones (2016). Dawes has earned countless awards including the Forward Prize for Poetry for Progeny of Air (1994); the Hollis Summers Prize for Poetry; a Pushcart Prize; the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award; the Poets and Writers Barnes and Noble Writers for Writers Award; and a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship. Dawes is currently the Glenna Luschei Editor of Prairie Schooner and Chancellor’s Professor of English at the University of Nebraska. The co-founder and programming director of the Calabash International Literary Festival, he also teaches in the Pacific MFA Writing Program and is on the faculty of Cave Canem.
L. Lamar Wilson
L. Lamar Wilson is the author of Sacrilegion — the 2012 selection for the Carolina Wren Press Poetry Series, a 2013 Independent Publishers Group bronze medalist, and a 2013 Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry finalist — and co-author of Prime: Poetry and Conversation (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2014), with the Phantastique Five. Individual poems and scholarly and personal essays have appeared in African American Review, Black Gay Genius (2014), Callaloo, Crab Orchard Review, jubilat, Muzzle, Prairie Schooner, Rattle, The 100 Best African American Poems (2010), Please Excuse This Poem: 100 Poets for the Next Generation (2015), Vinyl, The Washington Post/The Root, and elsewhere. Wilson, a Cave Canem and Callaloo graduate fellow and Florida A&M University alumnus, holds an MFA from Virginia Tech and is completing a doctorate in African American and multiethnic American poetics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He teaches creative writing and African American literature at The University of Alabama.
Kalamu ya Salaam
Poet, editor, playwright, music producer and arts administrator, Kalamu ya Salaam
is a native of New Orleans. Salaam has written seven books of poetry, in addition
to publishing cultural and political essays. He is also the founder of WordBand, a
poetry performance group; the NOMMO Literary Society, and Runagate Press. He was executive
director of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival for many years, and produced
"A NATION OF POETS" for the National Black Arts Festival. A respected music writer
and critic, he is the arts and entertainment editor for The New Orleans Tribune and
is a regular contributor to Wavelength, The Louisiana Weekly and The New Orleans Music
Magazine.
Douglas Kearney
Douglas Kearney’s collection of writing on poetics and performativity, Mess and Mess (Noemi Press, 2015), was a Small Press Distribution Handpicked Selection that Publisher’s Weekly called “an extraordinary book.” His third poetry collection, Patter (Red Hen Press, 2014) examines miscarriage, infertility, and parenthood and was a finalist for the California Book Award in Poetry. Cultural critic Greg Tate remarked that Kearney’s second book, National Poetry Series selection, The Black Automaton (Fence Books, 2009), “flows from a consideration of urban speech, negro spontaneity and book learning.” Someone Took They Tongues (Subito Press 2016) collects several of his libretti, including one written in a counterfeit Afro-diasporic language. His newest collection, Buck Studies (Fence Books, 2016) is available this fall. He was the guest editor for 2015’s Best American Experimental Writing (Wesleyan). He has received a Whiting Writer’s Award, residencies/fellowships from Cave Canem, The Rauschenberg Foundation, and others. His work has appeared in a number of journals, including Poetry, Nocturnes, Pleiades, Iowa Review, Boston Review, and Indiana Review; and anthologies, including Best American Poetry, Best American Experimental Writing, Wide Awake: Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond, The Breakbeat Poets, and What I Say: Innovative Poetry by Black Poets in America. Raised in Altadena, CA, he lives with his family in California’s Santa Clarita Valley. He teaches at CalArts.
Chasity Hale
Chasity Hale has been writing ever since she discovered the gravity of words. In 2015, she was inaugurated at the White House as one of five annually appointed student poets. Along with this honor, she has garnered a variety of other recognitions and publications in journals, newspapers and anthologies such as the American Poetry Review, Young American Poetry Digests, Susquehanna University newspaper and more. She also runs cross country and studies contemporary art in her free time.
De'John Hardges
De'John Hardges is a 17-year-old writer whose genres include poetry, short fiction,
plays and hip hop. This former Midwest National Student Poet is currently a Senior
Creative Writing Major at Cleveland School of The Arts. In addition to studying writing,
he has learned to produce beats, engineer, mix and master music. An avid performer,
he has appeared at the Rock Hall of Fame and at the Kennedy Theater at Playhouse.
He explains, “Performing for me is a rush of excitement and ambition that drives me
to work hard. Every time I step on stage I give my all to the people who gave their
time to support me.” He resides in his native Cleveland.