East St. Louis Action Research Project activities, Spring 2015

The following activities relate to my efforts as Coordinator of the East St. Louis Action Research Project in Spring 2015.

• April 28: Poetry commentary exhibit  (125 attendees) [Lovejoy Library]
Organized exhibit focusing on poetry reading and commentary project involving collegiate black men.

• April 13 – 15: Language Arts and Leadership Conference (125 attendees)
Organized 3-day conference focusing on arts activities, a book fair, audio devices, and a question and answer session with the president of Tuskegee University.

• April 7: Caption This Activity: Lessie Bates Davis Neighborhood House  (150 attendees) [MUC]
Organized caption/labeling activity focused on the Lessie Bates Davis Neighborhood House

• March 31: EBR Collection audio exhibit(60 attendees) -- Peck Hall and SSC
Organized audio exhibit focusing on the Eugene B. Redmond Collection. 

• March 26: Remixing Poetry, Pt. 2 at the SIUE/East St. Louis Charter High School  (20 students) [Charter School]
Organized activity focusing on writing and African American poetry for Charter High School students.

• March 24: Lessie Bates Davis Neighborhood House photo exhibit  (150 attendees) – Morris University Center
Organized photo exhibit featuring images from our Lessie Bates Davis Neighborhood House preservation project.

• March 19: Remixing Poetry at the SIUE/East St. Louis Charter High School  (20 attendees) – SIUE/East St. Charter High School
Organized activity focusing on writing and African American poetry for Charter High School students.

• February 26: The Black Book Exhibit (100 attendees) [Lovejoy Library]
Organized exhibit focused on major African American scrapbook; subject matter for the project touched on several topics related to the study of African Americans in urban environments.

• January 29: Escape Artists and the East St. Louis Charter High School  20 high school students) [SIUE/East
St. Louis Charter High School]
Organized reading and composition activity for East St. Louis High School Students

Related:
• East St. Louis Action Research Project activities  

Poetry and "Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks"

Basquiat's paintings appear on the cover of Kevin Young's volume To Repel Ghosts.

In late June, the plan is for me to visit the Brooklyn Museum to check out an exhibition "Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks." I'll take a few students with me, and we'll converse about our observations and what we learn.

Leading up to our visit, I'll have the young folks check out materials on Basquiat, including items on this site Artsy.net, which has a Basquiat page, featuring his artwork. There are articles as well, which offer some context for the painter. I suspect the materials will be useful as we prepare to take a look at excerpts from Basquiat's notebooks in the exhibit. 

Interestingly enough, I first really became more aware of Basquiat's work through Kevin Young's volume of poetry To Repel Ghosts. Young's book piqued my interest in the painter's life and work. I was also curious on what drew Young to Basquiat.

Later, I noticed that Jay Z had begun mentioning Basquiat in his raps. In his memoir Decoded , Jay Z discusses the painter:

The paintings don’t just sit on my walls, they move like crazy. Basquiat's work deals with fame and success: the story of what happens when you  actually get the thing you'd die for. One Basquiat print I own is called Charles the First–it’s about Charlie Parker, the jazz pioneer who died young of a heroin overdose, like Basquiat. In the corner of the painting are the words, MOST YOUNG KINGS GET THEIR HEAD CUT OFF. Like a lot of the art Basquiat created, that line has layers of meaning.

In the book, he goes on to discuss some of those meanings. Few rappers are as in-depth and introspective about visual artists as Jay Z is when it comes to Basquiat. Jay Z (b. 1969) and Young (b. 1970) are part of the same generational cohort, and so it stands out to me that the two verbal artists would be drawn to this common visual artist.

Poets have long referenced painters and paintings in their work. In addition to many established poets writing about painting, MFA programs and writing assignments regularly prompt poetry students to visit museums and produce poems based on art. Basquiat, though, perhaps enjoys more prominence among contemporary African American poets than most. Writing about Basquiat allows African American verbal artists to embrace the (largely Eurocentric?) tradition of writing about painters and paintings but adding a distinct black difference.

I've seen Basquiat showing up as a reference or influence in the works of various artists. So seeing the exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum will now give me a chance to consider some of Basquiat's interests and thoughts in process as they appear in his notebooks.  

Related:
• Jay Z & Jean-Michel Basquiat as poets

A Notebook on Jay-Z

2020
• March 14: Coverage of Jay Electronica's A Written Testimony, featuring Jay-Z

2019
• February 22: Jay-Z and Black Book History

2018
• June 19: Producers in the studio with Jay-Z: A primer - Howard Rambsy II
• January 21: #TheJayZMixtape - Kenton Rambsy

2017
• June 29: Selection of articles leading to the release of JAY-Z's 4:44 - Kenton Rambsy and Howard Rambsy II
• June 17: Jay Z’s Next Chapter—Beefing with the Exploitative Bail Industry - Kenton Rambsy and Howard Rambsy II
• May 30: Condensed version of the Jay Z Dataset presentation - Kenton Rambsy and Howard Rambsy II
• May 29: Visualizing the Length of Jay Z's music - Kenton Rambsy and Howard Rambsy II
• May 28: The Jay Z Dataset--presentation at the University of Notre Dame - Kenton Rambsy and Howard Rambsy II

2016
• November 9: Jay Z By the Numbers - Kenton Rambsy and Howard Rambsy II
• November 3: Why Jay Z? 4 Reasons - Kenton Rambsy and Howard Rambsy II
• October 17: William J. Harris, Bob Dylan, Jay Z & Secondary Literature - Kenton Rambsy and Howard Rambsy II
• April 18: Jay Z, African American literary studies & digital humanities - Kenton Rambsy
• April 10: Jay Z's Magna Carta Holy Grail (sampling sources) - Kenton Rambsy
• April 9: Jay Z's The Blueprint 3 (sampling sources) - Kenton Rambsy

Jay Z and the freestyle as mode of critique and creativity

Last week, May 16, 2015, during his "B-Sides Concert," Jay Z took the time to offer a brief freestyle where he responded to critiques of his new venture Tidal, a subscription-based music streaming service. The company's likelihood of success has been considered a long shot given the major competition such as Spotify and other companies who've been operating much longer and with more success.

Whatever the case, I was fascinated by Jay Z's freestyle and also the nature of the coverage of his rap. In particular, I was intrigued that he decided to reference slavery in his rhyme, and in general, it stands out that he used this mode of expression (the freestyle) to throw darts at major companies such as YouTube, Nike, Apple, and an ominous "they" that killed Freddie Gray, Michael Brown, and Trayvon Martin. Here's the section that first peaked my interest:

I feel like Youtube is the biggest culprit
Them niggas pay you a tenth of what you supposed to get
You know niggas die for equal pay right?
You know when I work I ain't your slave, right?
You know I ain't shucking and jiving and high-fiving
You know this ain't back in the days, right?
But I can't tell, how the way they killed Freddie Gray, right?
Shot down Mike Brown, how they did Tray right?
Let them continue choking niggas

There's an extensive history of poets, for instance, concentrating on slavery. Although rappers mention the subject (slavery and liberation) in passing, there's less acknowledgement that they do so. Jay Z's linkages to his current plight and slavery seemed notable to me, so I  thought it was amusing that journalists who covered the freestyle chose to remain fairly silent about that aspect of the freestyle.

Black Poetry Debates: tracking histories of tension, vs., and questions

African American poets usually gain attention in mainstream news outlets when they have won awards and prizes. And that's important because of how many poets have been winning awards over the last 10 years in particular and also because of how many black poets have been overlooked. But what is often lost in conversations about the "good news" is that there are many long-running debates and arguments in the world, or better, the worlds of African American poetry.

What follows is a list of some of the debates. By the way, this list is not comprehensive (see # 12, #13, #14). Mostly, I have identified topics and debates that have caught my attention studying histories of African American poetry over the last 18 years or so.   

Some of the debates are quite public. Some remain under the radar, whispered among various groups. Some of the debates are interracial (see #1, #7, #12); while others are intra-racial (see #3, #6, #9, #13) and cross-cultural. It's quite possible to participate in discussions of black poetry and never hear mention of these differences, in part because efforts to track the debates have been less extensive than the processes of celebrating poets and poetry.       

I should note that I'm indebted to black arts discourse because that realm more than any other that I am aware of actively initiated, highlighted, and in some cases exposed various debates, tensions, and questions during the late 1960s and early 1970s.   

Everything listed below obviously requires further elaboration, which we should pursue at some point in the future.     

1. Jefferson's vs. Phillis Wheatley -- There were longstanding beliefs that black folks lacked creativity, including the ability to produce poetry. Here's Thomas Jefferson:

Misery is often the parent of the most affecting touches in poetry. -- Among the blacks is misery enough, God knows, but no poetry. Love is the peculiar ;oestrum of the poet. Their love is ardent, but it kindles the senses only, not the imagination. Religion indeed has produced a Phyllis Whately; but it could not produce a poet. The compositions published under her name are below the dignity of criticism.

Jefferson's remarks were often presented as evidence of the racist views of African American creativity and black poets as well as reasoning why African American poetry receives relatively little substantial criticism.  

2. Dialect Dunbar vs. Standard Dunbar -- Paul Laurence Dunbar wrote verse in so-called standard English, and he wrote utilizing versions of black vernacular, or what folks commonly call 'dialect.' The popularity of Dunbar's "dialect" poems was sometimes vexing for him and others because of what it might suggest about the questionable interest of white audiences in representations of supposed "low-class" black people.         

Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series

By Jeremiah Carter 

Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series, which he originally entitled The Migration of the Negro in 1940 – 1941, features an artistic documentation of African American movement form the South to North. I call the series a “documentation” because Lawrence created the project in the middle of this major movement of African Americans. A timeline on the wall at the entrance of the exhibit helps visitors to locate Lawrence’s working in the middle of the actual migration.

It is evident that he had his finger on the pulse of the movement as it happened. Lawrence’s unique combination of painting and prose (captions) narrates this moment in history as hundreds of thousands of southern black people migrated North. It also reveals a number of the realities and complexities of black experiences in the Great Migration.

The sixty panel series moves visitors from the troubled South to a North that was less than welcoming. “One-Way Ticket Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series” encloses all sixty panels with the timeline at the entrance and other artistic representations of the migration. The multimedia exhibit includes showcases of novels, poetry, and articles of the time period, and contemporary, that speak to the historic movement.

This structure broadens the context and expands our appreciation for Lawrence’s work. When we typically think of artistic representations of the Great Migration, a number of writers come to mind such as Richard Wright, Langston Hughes, and James Baldwin. The exhibition of the Migration Series at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) situates Lawrence’s painting as an essential piece of the larger artistic narrative that complemented the Great Migration.

Jeremiah Carter is a graduate student in the English Department at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.

Related:
• NYC 2015

Malcolm X & Poetic Possibilities

We'd have a hard time envisioning some of our major developments in black poetry over the last 40 or so years without the influence and inspiration of Malcolm X. Most notably, his ideas and styles of delivery permeate Black Arts Poetry. He was an essential muse.

And well beyond poetry of the 1960s, we can still witness the spirit of Malcolm haunting rap music. The images of serious, conscious, black men dropping knowledge in public indeed link back to the slain minister. Malcolm's strong sense of style, memorably captured in photographs, gave generations of guys the notion that they could be cool and conscious.

Poets and others have written frequently about MLK. And in recent years,  Obama is referenced fairly often among rappers. For some reason though, Black Arts poets and rappers have not chosen to inhabit the personas of those figures to the degrees to which they channel Malcolm. Maybe it's the whole bad boy thing that makes Malcolm so inspiring?

Today, the fiery militant would have been 90 years old. For black verbal artists, Malcolm was and continues to be a wellspring of poetic possibilities.

Selection of Malcolm X poems 
• "Saint Malcolm" By Johari Amini
• "A Poem for Black Hearts" By Amiri Baraka
• "Malcolm X" By Gwendolyn Brooks
• "For Malcolm, U.S.A." By James Emanuel
• "El-hajj Malik El-shabazz" By Robert Hayden
• "It Was a Funky Deal" By Etheridge Knight
• "For Malcolm, A Year After" By Etheridge Knight
• "Malcolm Spoke/Who Listened?" By Haki Madhubuti
• "Malcolm X--An Autobiography" By Larry Neal
• "The Summer After Malcolm" By Larry Neal
• “Poems for Malcolm” By Carolyn Rodgers
• "Malcolm" By Sonia Sanchez
• "malcolm" By Welton Smith
• "For Brother Malcolm" By Edward S. Spriggs
• "For Malcolm X" By Margaret Walker

Related:
• Notebook on Malcolm X

NYC 2015

Each May from 2009 - 2013, I led groups of SIUE students to New York City. I took a break in 2014, but early last Fall, a group of students approached me and asked would I organize another trip. With contributions on the part of the travelers and assistance from several kind donors, we made it happen.

During our trip, we visited Harlem, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture,   the Strand Bookstore, the African Burial Ground, the Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of New York City, and various other locations.

Entries:
• At the Strand Bookstore 
• At the MoMA
• Philosophical perambulations in NYC
• We're a team, but not that kind of team
• Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series by Jeremiah Carter

Related:
• New York City Journeys

At the MoMA

We arrived in New York on Sunday night, and Monday morning we headed to the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) mainly to see the exhibition, "One-Way Ticket: Jacob Lawrence's Migration Series and Other Visions of the Great Movement North." The exhibit includes the 60 panels from Lawrence's 1940-1941 series depicting aspects of the Great Migration. The exhibit also showcases a wide range of materials related to Lawrence's paintings, including books, newspaper clippings, poems, music, and video clips.

"One-Way Ticket" is really powerful and informative. I was reminded of important aspects of history concerning African American migration and also continually made aware of new facts such as the scale of new migrants traveling to Detroit, St. Louis, Chicago, New York City, and other major cities.

Javier, one of our travelers, checking out digital touchscreens related to the exhibit

Javier, one of our travelers noted that he valued the exhibit because of how Lawrence's paintings "tell a story, a story of African-American migration." And of course, we didn't need to only rely on the paintings to tell stories, given that we were presented with such an array of various narratives in the exhibit.

In the main section of the exhibit with Lawrence's images, for instance, a table was equipped with touch-screen devices showing information on each of the panels from the Migration Series. There was also a viewing and listening station in another room with poems by Tyehimba Jess, Rita Dove, Kevin Young, and other poets. Overall, the exhibit was an engaging mixed media activity that served as an tremendous learning experience for our group. 

Related:  
• NYC 2015

Philosophical perambulations in NYC

Gabriel, one of our travelers, planning our next moves

The genesis of my trips to New York City began in the summer of 2008 when I walked for over 100 city blocks in the city on a couple of days just thinking and wondering as I wandered. I found the experience so intellectually rewarding that I began thinking of ways to bring students along on the journeys. We made our way to the city a number of times over the years.

Months ago when I was telling my colleague Tori Walters about that long walk that gave me the idea for the trips, she mentioned a course, entitled "Philosophical Perambulations" that she took in high school. The course involved walking and thinking. Her descriptions of the course corresponded with my own, long walk as well as some of what I think the students pick up as they collaboratively navigate NYC.

This year, we walked along various blocks; we walked around exhibits at MoMA, the Schomburg, and the Museum of the City of New York; and we walked around the Strand Bookstore. We observed, we thought to ourselves, we talked, took photographs, and thought and talked some more.

As we moved around thinking and walking, I was now equipped with this new phrase "philosophical perambulations" as yet another way to describe our activities. 

Related:  
• NYC 2015

We're a team, but not that kind of team

Early during our trip, as we waited for our flight from St. Louis to New York City, one of our travelers joked that the make-up of our group (8 black men) might lead people to think we were a basketball team. In retrospect, the joke was somewhat prophetic.

At least twice each day, from Sunday, May 10 - Wednesday, May 13, different people approached us and asked one of two questions: "Are you a basketball team?" or "Are you a football team?" The guys were good-natured about the questions, which they heard a couple more times when I was not in their presence.   
 
To be fair to our questioners, during this time of year, young guys, especially African American men, are often traveling to basketball camps. Maybe that's why we were mistook for basketball team?

At some point, we began wondering about creative ways we might respond. We were some kind of team, after all, right? If so, what  was our activity? How might be label ourselves? What were we competing for? Where were we headed to compete, when was practice? How good were we?

Not all our lines of inquiry were so fun. We wondered about the implications of repeatedly being viewed only as athletes. Was the idea that a group of black men being traveling together simply to visit the MoMA, a venerable bookstore, and the African Burial that strange and unusual? Why was "sports team" everyone's default setting when they saw us? 

Related:  
• NYC 2015

At the Strand Bookstore

Gary, one of our travelers, pursuing books at the Strand

We made our annual pilgrimage to the Strand  Bookstore in Greenwich Village on Monday, May 11.
I've made several trips to the store in the past with SIUE students, and they've always found the space enjoyable and deeply thought-provoking. Since they have relatively little access to bookstores of any comparable size and prominence, the experience of visiting the Strand is also fairly unique.

So much reading takes places on computer screens and digital devices these days; thus, the experience of moving through shelves and stakes of books seems to provide students with a kind of thrilling feeling, as if they were transported to some other alternate place. The guys on this year's trip were constantly discussing their intellectual experiences and development, and moving around a bookstore seemed to complement those conversations.

Greg, one of our travelers, checking out the 'Black Studies' section at the Strand

Here's a reflection from one of the travelers:

The Strand bookstore has the most diverse set of books that I've ever seen. Once I found an aisle that I liked in the nonfiction section, I just spent 20 minutes browsing through novels without even knowing it. I also found a fair amount of interesting books in my major field of study, Chemistry. --Isaiah B.

Related:  
• NYC 2015

Digital Creativity: Tyehimba Jess's "Another Man Done"

As part of the exhibition "One-Way Ticket: Jacob Lawrence's Migration Series and Other Visions of the Great Movement North," now showing at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA),  Elizabeth Alexander selected poets to produce poems in response to the Great Migration and Lawrence's work. The contributing poets included Rita Dove, Yusef Komunyakaa, Terrence Hayes, Nikky Finney, Patricia Spears Jones, Natasha Trethewey, Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, Crystal Williams, Kevin Young, and Tyehimba Jess.

The unusual appearance and performance of Jess's poem "Another Man Done" makes the piece particularly notable. Further, the nature of the poem reveals that Jess took advantage of distinct technological processes to produce the poem. Jess's earliest work showed he was a skilled performer; then his book Leadbelly revealed his "literary" or print-based capabilities; now we have a glimpse at his digital creativity.       

The printed version of Jess's contribution "Another Man Done" is based on the caption that Lawrence provided for panel 22 in his migration series. The caption reads: "Another of the social causes of the migrants' leaving was that at times they did not feel safe, or it was not the best thing to be found on the streets late at night. They were arrested on the slightest provocation."

6 reasons why poets like bad boys

It's clear that large numbers of African American poets have a thing for bad boys, or more specifically, the idea of bad men. Throughout the history of black poetry, poets frequently wrote about unruly, rebellious, troubling, militant, criminal, and defiant black men. Bad men are clearly important poetic muses for women and men poets. What follows are some reasons why.

1. Addressing anti-black racism -- Poets who adopt the personas of bad men are in a position to speak out on a range of racist practices that those figures may have witnessed. Brutal Imagination by Cornelius Eady, Leadbelly by Tyehimba Jess, and The Big Smoke (about Jack Johnson) by Adrian Matejka track various modes of anti-black racism that real or fictive black men observed from a distinct vantage point. 

2. Reinterpreting  the meaning of "bad" -- When poets write about figures such as Frederick Douglass, Henry Box Brown,and Nat Turner, they are essentially pushing and challenging the notion of "fugitive" slaves. A "bad" slave for white owners is now often viewed as good in the eyes of black folks.

3. Transmitting aspects of folk culture -- The continued, long-running focus on Shine, Stagolee, and related bad man figures allowed black poets to participate in established black folk traditions. Participating in the production of bad man poems is to draw on a range of distinct African American linguistic and artistic practices.  

4. Demonstrating creativity -- The composition of poetry featuring bad men gives poets opportunities to subvert and re-arrange aspects of a well-known approach and at the same time showcase creativity.  During the late 1960s, dozens of poets wrote about Malcolm X; doing so allowed them to align themselves with a large group of fellow poets and at the same time reveal their unique takes on the militant Muslim minister. 

5. Exploring alternative and distant territories -- Poets, especially a class of people, aren't typically known as bad men, so writing about and in the voices of such figures allows poets to stretch out and explore areas that might be less familiar to their personal experiences. Granted, there are many areas that are likely outside the personal experiences of poets, but "bad men" constitute well-known subjects that are nonetheless distant enough from poets and their audiences. 

6. Bad men lead exciting lives -- Bad man figures draw wide attention for some of their outrageous or notorious activities. The defiant and rebellious ways of select men are no doubt appealing for poets interested in showing how black people challenged oppression.   


Related:
• Poetry, bad men, and intellectual histories 
• A Notebook on bad men in poetry
• Black Poets, Bad Men, and Creativity 

Poetry, bad men, and intellectual histories

Cornelius Eady's Brutal Imagination (2001), Kevin Young's To Repel Ghosts (2001), Tyehimba Jess's Leadbelly (2005), Adrian Matejka's The Big Smoke (2013), Tony Medina's "Broke" series, and more showcase bad or at least challenging black men. Even more, the volumes present the inner thinking of select figures and ultimately give us a sense of protagonists' intellectualism.

Eady's volume -- about the fictive black man that Susan Smith invented as the kidnapper of her children -- may have anticipated the many series of persona poems that we have witnessed over the last decade and a half. Eady's figure is a reflective, thoughtful black man, who was and was not "bad," a criminal.

In addition to utilizing aspects of persona poems, what drew me to several volumes and individual poems over the years has been the devotion among poets to the intellects and ways of thinking among a diverse group of black men. It's fascinating that poets chose to concentrate on bad men. Perhaps those figures served as generative poetic muses?

The Intellectual Histories of Black Boys

Group of the guys from the program talking, 2010

Reading autobiographical writings and biographical studies of Frederick Douglass, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, John Coltrane, Malcolm X, Amiri Baraka, and Barack Obama, to name a few, over the years inclined me to think about the childhoods of these prominent black men. In addition to viewing them as notable historical and political figures, my readings led me to consider their lives as black boys.

Early on, I discovered Wright and his autobiography, Black Boy. Just as important, I fortuitously landed at an undergraduate institution that happened to employ an important Wright Scholar, Jerry W. Ward, Jr., who in turn introduced me to a broad, Wright Critical Paradigm. Unknowingly, I was developing a useful blueprint.

Student at our annual visit to the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, Ohio 2008

If you studied Wright while living in Mississippi, as I was at the time, you inevitably posed a question: How did his experiences as a black boy shape his thinking? You might then be predisposed to raise that question concerning other black men that you studied or encountered along your travels.

Over the last several years, I’ve read works by and about Colson Whitehead, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Kevin Young, Jay Z, and others. I began wondering about their early developments as thinkers and then writers. At times, for each one, I’ve returned to versions of my Wright question: How did his experiences as a black boy shape his thinking?

Lovejoy Library & Humanities Programming (2014-2015)

Even a cursory glance at our our arts and humanities from Fall 2014 and Spring 2015 reveals that many of our programs took place at Lovejoy Library. We hosted arts activities, listening sessions, exhibits in the Underground Reading Room, and an arts and leadership conference in the library.


In fact, 17 of our 34 major public events took place at Lovejoy Library this semester. The activities and events drew about 1,459 attendees.

Sept. 10: African American Literary Showcase

Sept. 11: Poetry Listening Session

Sept. 25: The Big Smoke exhibit

Poetry conversations and tummeling

In Smarter Than You Think: How Techonology is Changing Our Minds for the Better, Clive Thompson mentions how a group of Internet writers and thinkers settled on a term for the "mix of persuasion, listening, and good hosting" employed to generate active online conversations. The term that the group came up with was "tummeling," derived from "tummler" -- a person who motivates people at a party to have fun and dance.

In some respects, I began thinking, poetry would definitely benefit from more deliberate tummeling. Poetry, or really any field, needs productive agitators to inspire increased lively participation. "Look behind any high-functioning discussion forum online," notes Thompson, "and you'll find someone doing tummeling."

Perhaps poet laureates should handle tummeling. They are, after all, charged  with responsibilities of celebrating and raising the profile of poetry and poets. But, then again, conversing about poetry is related to yet somewhat different from only celebrating poetry and poets.

Tummeling might mean paying attention to a variety of non-poetry topics that interest audiences and then find ways to include poetry in the conversation.  Apparently, good tummeling involves paying close attention to audience needs and interests.

If we are to get more diverse groups of people engaged in thinking, talking, and writing about poetry, we'll need to adopt and adapt some form of tummeling. 

A photo-review of arts & humanities programming (Spring 2015)

Here's a photo-review of our Spring 2015 programming, which included 16 public events (totaling 1,332 participants), 3 reading groups (125 participants), and one preservation project. The image captions below contain links to additional write-ups on the projects.

 

January 29: Escape Artists and the East St. Louis Charter High School

February 10: Opening passages exhibit

Spring 2015 Reading Groups

February 11: Imagining increased opportunities for African American students 

Poetry commentary exhibit

Tuesday, April 28, we hosted our final Public Thinking Event of the school year. Our exhibit highlighted aspects of the poetry reading and writing project that several of collegiate black men at the university participated in this past semester.

Blogging about Poetry in April 2015

[Related content: Blogging about Poetry]

• April 27: Thinking about Collegiate Black Men Writing about Poetry 
• April 26: Poetry and service-learning 
• April 6: The value of lists about African American poetry  
• April 4: An audio exhibit concerning the EBR Collection 
• April 2: The value of blogging African American poetry news   
• April 2: A Notebook on the value of blogging about African American poetry 
• April 1: Blogging about Poetry in March 2015