More Lasting Impacts of Black Poetry After the Black Arts Movement

By Deborah M. Mix 

I was thrilled when I learned I’d been accepted to the NEH Seminar on Black Poetry After Black Arts, and even more thrilled to discover I’d be learning from and alongside scholars and poets like Evie Shockley, Howard Rambsy II, Tyehimba Jess, Harryette Mullen, and Kevin Quashie in the summer of 2015. The conversations we shared were galvanizing for my pedagogy and scholarship. Kevin Quashie suggested I read Bettina Judd’s patient., and I have since written and published an article on Bettina Judd’s patient. in Revising the Elegy in the Black Lives Matter Era. 

Tyehimba Jess’s thrilling reading led me to teach his 2016 collection, Olio, in my classes at Ball State University. Evie Shockley’s brilliant close reading strategies have shaped the ways I help my students engage with a variety of contemporary poems. Howard Rambsy’s interest in persona poems led me to think about that complex and innovative field. Harryette Mullen showed me new ways to think about poetic genealogies and about what makes a "nature poem."

None of these experiences would’ve been possible without the tireless work of Maryemma Graham and the rest of her University of Kansas community with the support of the National Endowment for the Humanities, who created such a rich and welcoming space for poetics and scholars from all over the country to read and talk and learn together.

Related: 

• Black Poetry After the Black Arts Movement: Reflections