Thursday, November 18, 2010

Sharing Af-Am Poetry at SIUE/East St. Louis Charter School


Students observing poetry display panels at SIUE/East St. Louis Center

This past Monday, we hosted one of our mixed media poetry exhibits at the SIUE/East St. Louis Charter School. As always, the event gave us an opportunity to interact with a lively group of students and hear their perspectives on African American poetry.

We shared works by our project's featured poets Maya Angelou, Amiri Baraka, Gwendolyn Brooks, Lucille Clifton, Nikki Giovanni, Eugene B. Redmond, and Margaret Walker. For this exhibit, we also included poems by black studies contributors Joy Howze, Vince Manuel, Cindy Lyles, and Dometi Pongo.

Our exhibit also showcased a a dozen or so images from the Eugene B. Redmond Collection.


Colin Neumeyer at poetry exhibit with student

Colin Neumeyer, an English teacher at the charter school, made the initial invitation for us to visit a group of his students. During the course of organizing the event, Colin expanded the audience to ensure that an even larger number of students at the school viewed the exhibit.

We're hoping to make some return visits to the school and collaborate on more projects.

(Funding for the exhibit was made possible by funds from the Illinois Humanities Council and the Black Studies Program @ SIUE).  

Related Post:
Sharing Af-Am Poetry at Woodland Elementary
Eugene B. Redmond and the EBR Collection

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