BookSwell

Poets often compose poems that respond to other poems. Sometimes, these new poems make glancing allusions to their sources. Sometimes they may be ironic parodies, frustrated retorts, or extensions of the source's concerns and themes. In this reading/talk, poet Douglas Kearney will share writing from the Lift Every Voice anthology that has inspired poetic response over time and distance. This program is part of Lift Every Voice: Why African American Poetry Matters, a national public humanities initiative of Library of America presented in partnership with The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture with generous support from The National Endowment for the Humanities, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and Emerson Collective. About Douglas Kearney: Douglas Kearney has published six collections, including Buck Studies (Fence Books, 2016), winner of the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Award, the CLMP Firecracker Award for Poetry, and California Book Award silver medalist (Poetry). M. NourbeSe Philip calls Kearney’s collection of libretti, Someone Took They Tongues. (Subito, 2016), “a seismic, polyphonic mash-up.” Kearney’s Mess and Mess and (Noemi Press, 2015), was a Small Press Distribution Handpicked Selection that Publisher’s Weekly called “an extraordinary book.” His newest collection, Sho (Wave, 2021) is forthcoming. His operas include Sucktion, Mordake, Read More ...