October 5,6,7, 2005
a mini-conference at the University of Notre Dame
What would American language sound like, asked Ralph Ellison, without the idioms and nuances of African American speech? In our readings, panels, and conversations, our mini-conference will explore how black American poetry has shaped the larger texture of American aesthetics, culture, and community.
Poets Elizabeth Alexander, Rowan Phillips Sharan Strange, and Natasha Trethewey work in a wide range of poetic cadences, fromthe intricately formal to the experimental. Their poetry addresses the subtleties of negotiating home and belonging. Because they simultaneously reflect two communities—a localized black one and a larger American one—these poets expand our understanding of African-American verse as an aesthetic that is influenced by and influences other art. Please join us in celebrating the “long reach” of their work.
Students in Creative Writing classes are required to attend at least two events.
Events and Activities
Wednesday, October 5 October
7:30 p.m. Reading: Sharan Strange and Rowan Phillips.
Notre Dame Downtown, 217 S. Michigan Street, South Bend.
Reception to follow.
Thursday, October 6
2 - 3:30 p.m. Panel Discussion: “The Long Reach of African American Poetics,” with the poets and Ivy Wilson, Department of English; moderated by Keith D. Lee, Department of Africana Studies. 100-104 McKenna Hall.
5 p.m. Pre-reading reception. McKenna Hall.
5:30 p.m. Reading: Elizabeth Alexander and Natasha Trethewey. 100-104 McKenna Hall.
Friday, October 7
10:00 – 11:30 a.m. Poetry workshop led by Keith D. Lee. 208 McKenna Hall. Advance registration information.
11:45 – 12:35 p.m. Classroom Q & A with the poets. Please contact Valerie Sayers (vsayers@nd.edu) to participate.
The Poets
Elizabeth Alexander is the author of four books of poems, most recently American Sublime, and the essay collection The Black Interior. Alexander has taught at The University of Chicago, Smith College, and New York University and has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation as well as the George Kent Award, given by Gwendolyn Brooks. She is a professor at Yale University.
Rowan Phillips received his Ph.D. from Brown University. His manuscript, AIAS, was selected as one of ten finalists for The Walt Whitman Award of The Academy of American Poets. At Stony Brook University, he teaches poetry, poetics, and African-American and Caribbean literature.
Sharan Strange was educated at Harvard College, and received an MFA in poetry from Sarah Lawrence College. She is the author of Ash, winner of the 2000 Barnard New Women Poets Prize, selected by Sonia Sanchez (Beacon Press, 2001). She is a contributing and advisory editor of Callaloo and co-founder of the Dark Room Collective. Strange has been a writer-in-residence at Fisk University, Spelman College, the University of California at Davis, and the California Institute of the Arts, and has taught writing, literature, and social studies in an alternative school that focuses on experiential learning.
Natasha Trethewey teaches creative writing at Emory University. She won the first Cave Canem Prize in 1999 for Domestic Work, which also won a Pushcart Prize and the Lillian Smith Book Award. She has received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Grolier Poetry Prize. Her poems have been featured in the New England Review, Southern Humanities Review, American Poetry Review, and Callaloo, and are included in such anthologies as Giant Steps: An Anthology of New African-American Writing and The New Young American Poets. Her latest collection is Bellocq’s Ophelia.
This mini-conference is made possible by the generous support of the Paul M. and Barbara Henkels Visiting Scholar Series,
The Office of the Provost, The Office of Undergraduate Studies,
College of Arts and Letters, The Graduate School,
the Creative Writing Program, the Department of English and Africana Studies and Cornelius Eady.