On March 20th A Splendid Wake
will celebrate Georgia Douglas Johnson and the “Saturday Nighters,” poet May Miller, the
Federal Poets, Poetry Workshops born during Poetry and the National
Conscience conferences, and the Modern Urban Griots.
A
Splendid Wake arose from a desire to honor the poets of the past decades by creating an online resource that documents and preserves the remarkable literary history of
Washington poetry from 1900 through the present. Articles about the poets,
movements, publications, readings, sponsoring institutions, recordings and
broadcasts provide a picture of the diverse and unique life of poetry that
evolved over more than a century in the Nation's Capitol. This lively event is the third annual gathering that presents the work collected over the last year.
THE PROGRAM
- Regie Cabico, host
- Kim Roberts and Michon Boston on Georgia Douglas Johnson and the Saturday Nighters
- Miller Newman on May Miller
- Judith McCombs on the Federal Poets with Donald Illich and Dorrit Carroll
- Linda Pastan and Rod Jellema on poetry workshops with Siv Cedering, Primus St. John, Roland Flint, and others
- Toni Asanti Lightfoot on Modern Urban Griots with Brandon D. Johnson, Holly Bass and Twain Dooley
- and Sunil Freeman, in the important role of Timekeeper!
BIOS
Co-editor
of Flicker and Spark: A Contemporary
Queer Anthology of Spoken Word and Poetry and Poetry Nation: The North
American Anthology of Fusion Poetry, Regie
Cabico, the evening's host, has received awards in National Slam competitions
and for his work as slam coach for individual and team competitors in the U.S.
and Canada. He is co-director of La-Ti-Do, a weekly spoken word and cabaret
series in D.C.
Georgia Douglas
Johnson—poet,
playwright, and composer—brought together Kelly Miller and his daughter May
Miller, Alain Locke, Carter G. Woodson, Angelina Weld Grimke, Langston Hughes,
Jean Toomer, Zora Neale Hurston, and many others at weekly salons at her home
on S Street in D.C. Her life and works will be presented by Kim Roberts, a true D.C. force for
poetry and the author of four collections of poetry, the editor of Beltway Poetry Quarterly and the
anthology Full Moon on K Street. Michon Boston will also discuss
Johnson. She is a writer/producer and author of “Iola’s Letter,” a play based
on the events that transformed Ida B. Wells from a journalist to a staunch
anti-lynching activist. Boston’s plays have been produced at the Source
Theatre, the National Black Theater Festival in North Carolina, and the Kennedy
Center.
May Miller was a
Washington poet, playwright and educator whose literary career began in the
Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Her father, Kelly Miller, was a nationally
known author and philosopher, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and a
professor of sociology at Howard University. He was the first African American
to attend Johns Hopkins University where he studied astronomy. W.E.B. DuBois
and Booker T. Washington visited their home. May remembers having to give up
her room for Paul Laurence Dunbar. When May Miller received an award for a
play, the event was attended by Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, James Weldon
Johnson, and Jean Toomer. Miller served as chair of the Literature Panel of the
D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Her niece, Miller Newman, will provide a picture of May Miller’s life. Miller
Newman is a senior faculty member in the Department of English Composition and
Reading at Montgomery College. She is a poet, essayist, and aspiring novelist
with a doctorate in Higher Education Administration.
The
Federal Poets Workshop, founded in
1944, is the D.C. metro area’s longest running workshop for poets. Members meet
monthly at Tenley Public Library to critique poems and produce a biannual
journal. Craig Reynolds, Frank Goodwyn, and Nancy Allinson have served as
presidents. Don Illich is the
current president. At least five workshops and two readings series have emerged
from Federal Poets. Judith McCombs, vice-president
of Federal Poets since 2005, is a poet and literary scholar. Her poetry has
appeared in many publications and published The
Habit of Fire: Poems Selected &
New in 2005. She directs the Kensington Row Bookshop Poetry Readings, edits
for Word Works DC, and is on the Splendid Wake board. Don Illich, current head of Federal Poets, has published
poems in The Iowa Review, Nimrod, and
Rattle. His poetry has been nominated
four times for the Pushcart Prize. His chapbook, Rocket Children, was published in 2012. Doritt
Carroll received her undergraduate and law degrees from Georgetown
University. In Caves and GLTTL STP were published by Brickhouse
Books and her poems have appeared in Poet
Lore, Plainsongs, and Journal of
Formal Poetry.
Rod Jellema ran a series of
conferences at the University of Maryland beginning in 1968, Poetry and the
National Conscience, and sent letters out inviting folks to join a fortnightly
writer’s workshop already in progress. The existing group—Siv Cedering, Eddie
Gold, Primus St. John, and Bill Holland—were joined by Linda Pastan, Ann Darr, Roland Flint, Gary Sange, and Myra Sklarew.
Others who joined occasionally were Elisavietta Ritchie, John Pauker, Henry
Taylor. “Notable sit-ins or drop-ins were Gene McCarthy, Bill Stafford, and
Stanley Kunitz,” says Rod Jellema, who adds, “Ann Darr estimated that the
members of the workshop published more than sixty books.” Linda
Pastan and Rod Jellema will
reminisce about this workshop. Jellema,
professor emeriti, University of Maryland, founded the Creative Writing
Program, and is the author of five collections of poems, the most recent, Incarnality: The Collected Poems. He is currently working on a history of early
New Orleans jazz, Really Hot: A New Hearing for Old New Orleans Jazz. Linda Pastan has published thirteen
volumes of poetry, most recently Traveling
Light. Two collections have been finalists for the National Book Award. A
new collection, Insomnia, is due out
from Norton in fall 2015. In 2003, she received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for
lifetime achievement.
The
way Toni Asanti Lightfoot tells it,
The Modern Urban Griots got their
start on a cold February night in 1994 at a place called “It’s Your Mug Cafe”
at 2601 P Street, N.W. in Georgetown. She says that this series “had a broad
impact. It influenced the establishment of numerous poetry events on U Street,
N.W., as well as Blackman’s Freestyle Union hip-hop workshops and created a
commitment to community and education.” The group included Brandon D. Johnson, Holly Bass, Twain Dooley, and Lori Tsang, among
others. Beloved hecklers were The Brock Crew, Kenny Carroll, Brian Gilmore, and
Joel Dias Porter (DJ Renegade). The group performed at the Whitney Museum in
NY, the Nuyorican, and smaller venues around the city. In recent times the
group reunited at the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage. Toni Asanti Lightfoot, is a poet, educator, activist, and has an MS
in Traditional Oriental Medicine. Her work has been anthologized and can be
seen on YouTube. She is editor of Dream
of a Word: A Tia Chucha Press Anthology. Holly Bass, a Cave Canem fellow, writer and performer, studied
modern dance and creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College and earned a master’s
degree in Journalism from Columbia University. In 2011, The Root and 2012 Best
Performance Artist in Washington City
Paper named her one of the Top 30 Black Performance Poets internationally.
Brandon D. Johnson, founding member of
Modern Urban Griots and The Black Rooster Collective, received a BA from Wabash
College and a JD from Antioch School of Law. He is a Cave Canem Graduate
Fellow, the author of Love’s Skin, Man
Burns Ant, the Strangers Between,
and has work published in numerous anthologies. Twain Dooley, born in D.C., served on active duty during
Desert Storm, and after a two-year stay in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (as a
civilian), returned to Washington and began to perform for a variety of
audiences. Author of several books, he has opened for Amiri Baraka and Jimmy
“JJ” Walker, won top honors on the DC/Baltimore Slam Team, and is currently
working on the story of his life, “None of This Makes Sense.”
What:
3rd Annual Public Program Celebrating Poetry in the Nation’s Capital
from 1900 to the Present
When:
Friday, March 20th, 2015 from 6:30-8:30 P.M.
Where:
George Washington University Gelman Library, Suite 702, 2130 H Street, N.W.,
Washington, D.C. (near Foggy Bottom Metro stop).
Cost:
Free and Open to the Public
Splendid Wake-up
Blog: http://splendidwake.blogspot.com
For
more program information contact Joanna Howard asplendidwake@gmail.com
