Why Cities, States Need Cultural Witnesses like Brian Gilmore

It’s fine and good that we have poet laureates, but we have to admit that cities and states should do themselves a favor and hire someone to produce the kind of cultural and literary history that Brian Gilmore provides in his book No More Worlds to Conquer: The Black Poet in Washington, DC (2026), chronicling poets and developments across generations.

I’m reading this book and wishing I had one for St. Louis, and wishing there was one for Chicago, Jackson, Mississippi, and Atlanta, and on and on. In my travels over the years, I’ve heard people discuss bits and pieces of their locals the way Gilmore discusses things in No More Worlds to Conquer. But he extends those fragments in a deep, interconnected, and thoughtful way, assembling a fuller account of a city’s poetic life.

I’ve always had what, in retrospect, was a vague sense that Washington, DC, was a critical locus of artistic production and literary activity in Black literary history. Gilmore fills in so many spaces, and he regularly offers ideas that never occurred to me. His book makes a strong case for local histories, but also for local chroniclers, or what I refer to as cultural witnesses. These figures document writers and texts, as well as readings, institutions, relationships, and evolving artistic communities.

Gilmore opens by mentioning a poetry reading that Paul Laurence Dunbar gave in DC in 1896. A year later, he moved to the city, where he worked at the Library of Congress. Dunbar is where Gilmore begins, and from there he takes us across the 20th century and into the 21st century, tracing overlapping circles of poets, venues, and organizations. 

More and more, over the decades in African American literary studies, it’s been common for scholars to produce more condensed studies, spans of five to ten years. That’s a positive result of a maturing discipline. On the other hand, it’s good to see such an expansive study like the one Gilmore provides. You get a macro view of poetry in DC, essentially tracing lineages and continuities from Dunbar’s reading in 1896 to a reading in the city in 2022. The long view makes visible patterns of mentorship, institutional support, and recurring sites of poetic gathering.

In an interview for his press, Gilmore noted that “I came along right at the time that one major era was winding up and another was beginning.” He was participating and taking note as the Black Arts era receded and spoken word, rap, and Go-Go took shape. He also noted that some of the city’s universities have important records and documents that made it possible for him to chart the long history of poetry and arts organizing in DC. Together, these materials and lived experiences allow him to document this wonderful, longstanding, evolving cultural ecosystem.

I hope aspiring poets in DC come across this book, and just as important, I hope arts organizers in cities and towns across the country get a hold of this book. Beyond serving as a wonderful history of this one city, Gilmore has produced a blueprint for illuminating local literary histories.