April’s In Your Ear will be celebrating the recently released anthology, What I Say: Innovative Poetry by Black Writers in America.

A little about the book:

What I Say: Innovative Poetry by Black Writers in America is the second book in a landmark two-volume anthology that explodes narrow definitions of African American poetry by examining experimental poems often excluded from previous scholarship. The first volume, Every Goodbye Ain’t Gone, covers the period from the end of World War II to the mid-1970s. In What I Say, editors Aldon Lynn Nielsen and Lauri Ramey have assembled a comprehensive and dynamic collection that brings this pivotal work up to the present day.

Several of the poets discussed in What I Say forged relationships with members of the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry movement and participated in the broader community of innovative poetry that emerged in the late 1970s and early 1980s and continues to exert a powerful influence today.

BIOS:

T.J. Anderson III has an MFA from the University of Michigan and a PhD from Binghamton University. A former Fullbright scholar at Cairo University, he is the author of Ntes to Make the Sound Come Right: Four Innovators of Jazz Poetry, River to Cross, At Last Roundup and the spoken word CD Blood Octave. He teaches courses in jazz literature, African American literature, poetry and performance, and creative writing at Hollins University.

Pia Deas is an Assistant Professor at Lincoln University. Her first book, Cargo, is forthcoming from Anomalous Press. She holds degrees from Temple University and Penn State University.

Mark McMorris is a professor at Georgetown University. His books include The Black Reeds, The Blaze of the Poui, Moth Wings, The Cafe at Ligth, Palinarus Suite, Figure for a Hypothesis and Entrepot. The Book of Landings is forthcoming from Wesleyan University Press.

2438 18th Street in Adams Morgan
(south of Columbia Rd. on the west side of the street)
All readings are on third Sundays at 3 PM, Admission $5, FREE for DCAC members