Native Detroiter and California poet Geoffrey Jacques, Detroit-via-Cincinnati poet Tyrone Williams, Cleveland poet Julie Ezelle Patton, Detroit Poet and writer Kim Hunter and jazz pianist Phil Hale.

August 24, 2016 at 7:00 p.m.

What I Say: Innovative Poetry by Black Writers in America

Reading and Signing with Special Guests: Native Detroiter and California poet Geoffrey Jacques, Detroit-via-Cincinatt poet Tyrone Williams, Cleveland poet Julie Ezelle Patton, Detroit Poet and writer Kim Hunter and The Phil Hale Jazz Ensemble.
Hosted by The Detroit Writers' Guild
Copies of the new anthology on sale.

More information on the reading

In July 2015, I was the recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) fellowship that allowed me to participate in a three-week seminar, Paul Laurence Dunbar and American Literary History, sponsored by the NEH, hosted by the Ohio History Connection, and facilitated by the Creative Learning Factory.

The seminar took place in Columbus OH, with field trips to Dunbar’s last home in Dayton and to the Ohio History Consortium Museum. It was three weeks spent with some two-dozen-plus scholars discussing the works of Dunbar, as well as the criticism surrounding the work of this seminal African American poet, lyricist, and writer. Of particular interest were readings of Dunbar’s fiction, including his Civil War novel, The Fanatics (1900) and several of his short stories. Other topics included explorations of Dunbar’s dialect poetry and the songs he co-wrote with Will Marion Cook for the early twentieth-century musicals The Casino Girl (1900) and In Dahomey (1903). Lead scholar Tom Morgan (University of Dayton) and visiting scholars Gene Andrew Jarrett (Boston University), Nadia Nurhussein (University of Massachusetts Boston), Andrea N. Williams (Ohio State University), Herbert Martin (University of Dayton), and independent scholar Ray Sapierstein all led provocative, informative, and interesting sessions. Martin’s performances reciting Dunbar in the manner of a turn-of-the-twentieth-century orator were a real treat.

Special thanks goes Creative Learning Engineer Becki Trivison for all she did to organize things such that we could concentrate on the work at hand, and to Matthew Teutsch and Jonathan Daigle for being such gracious hosts at their wonderful jambalaya dinner.

—Geoffrey Jacques

Three Poems Published in Live Mag!

Three new poems from Geoffrey Jacques have been pubished in issue 11 of Live Mag!, the publishing component of a multimedia art, poetry and performance event, born to run at the Bowery Poetry Club.

Read the complete poems online at
www.livemag.org/issue_11/
jacques.html