‘Poetry and Protest’: MPAC and Dodge to present Pulitzer winner Tyehimba Jess, online, June 30

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Tyehimba Jess
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From the Mayo Performing Arts Center:

MPAC Arts in the Community presents in collaboration with Dodge Poetry Program:
“I am deliberate and afraid/ of nothing: Poetry & Protest “
Featuring Pulitzer Prize winning poet Tyehimba Jess
With Marina Carreira, J.C. Todd, Vincent Toro and Rashad Wright

Debuts Tuesday, June 30 at 8 pm
on MPAC’s Facebook and You Tube Channels
Available on MPAC’s website later in the week

(Morristown) – Mayo Performing Arts Center in collaboration with the Dodge Poetry Program presents a free virtual Arts in the Community event, “I am deliberate and afraid/ of nothing: Poetry & Protest,” featuring Pulitzer Prize winning writer Tyehimba Jess, Tuesday, June 30, 2020, at 8 pm.

It can be viewed:

Facebook link
YouTube link

Also performing are Marina Carreira, J.C. Todd, Vincent Toro and Rashad Wright.

This event was originally scheduled to take place on March 19 but was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In light of recent current events, the poetry becomes all the more relevant and powerful. The poets speak to issues of people of color, disenfranchisement, as well as hope.

Tyehimba Jess is the author of two books of poetry, Leadbelly and Olio. Olio won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, The Midland Society Author’s Award in Poetry, and received an Outstanding Contribution to Publishing Citation from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association.

It was also nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the PEN Jean Stein Book Award, and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award.  Leadbelly was a winner of the 2004 National Poetry Series. The Library Journal and Black Issues Book Review both named it one of the “Best Poetry Books of 2005.”

Jess, a Cave Canem and NYU Alumni, received a 2004 Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and was a 2004–2005 Winter Fellow at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center. Jess is also a veteran of the 2000 and 2001 Green Mill Poetry Slam Team, and won a 2000–2001 Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Poetry, the 2001 Chicago Sun-Times Poetry Award, and a 2006 Whiting Fellowship.

He presented his poetry at the 2011 TedX Nashville Conference and won a 2016 Lannan Literary Award in Poetry. Jess is a Professor of English at College of Staten Island. Jess’ fiction and poetry have appeared in many journals, as well as anthologies such as Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry, Beyond The Frontier: African American Poetry for the Twenty-First Century, Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social and Political Black Literature and Art, Bum Rush the Page: A Def Poetry Jam, Power Lines: Ten Years of Poetry from Chicago’s Guild Complex, and Slam: The Art of Performance Poetry.

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