April is National Poetry Month, a celebration that reminds the public that poets have an integral role to play in our culture and that poetry matters.

Amanda Gorman is not the only African American Poet. Her reading at President Biden’s inauguration was a singular version of the common expectation that African American artists speak for the community or embody a race’s social fortunes. Within this heritage, there has been social and artistic anxiety about how these race politics insinuate themselves into the mind, transforming private acts of the imagination into a mode of collective representation and, sometimes, even of public spectacle. But what was once a liability has become a strength, a source of artistic community and aesthetic innovation among the most prominent contemporary African American writers. In this webinar, we will consider how three such writers turn inward to their private black interiors in order to validate the differences that, in publication and public performance, can speak for liberty and justice for all.

Speaker: Keith D. Leonard is an Associate Professor of Literature at American University. He is the author of "Fettered Genius: The African American Bardic Poet from Slavery to Civil Rights". His publications, presentations, and courses have revolved around his study of political consciousness in African American poetry and poetics and in hip-hop culture. His current interests include African Americans artists in Paris, jazz in African American culture, and the evolving innovations of Afrofuturism. He is currently working on a book project entitled "Black Avant-Gardism" that explores the role of African American writers' collectives in the artistic innovations, public profiles, and cultural impact of contemporary African American poets.

Date:
Thursday, April 29, 2021
Time:
7:00pm - 8:00pm
Audience:
Events for Adults
Categories:
Workshop Writing
Calendar:
Arlington Public Library
Registration has closed.

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