This is a Zoom event lead by Just Poet Celeste Schantz, with special guest poet Dante Micheaux. You can join by phone, computer, or both. An invitation link to join the meeting will be emailed to you the day before the event. Registration is required at the link below.
Book Club Discussion: Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry, Edited by Camille T. Dungy
We will be exploring "Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry," Edited by Camille T. Dungy.
Come explore the intersections of race and environment. Black poets have a long tradition of incorporating treatments of the natural world into their work, but it is often read as political, historical, or protest poetry-anything but nature poetry. This is particularly true when the definition of what constitutes nature writing is limited to work about the pastoral or the wild.
Camille T. Dungy has selected 180 poems from 93 poets that provide unique perspectives on American social and literary history to broaden our concept of nature poetry and African American poetics. Included are poets writing out of slavery, Reconstruction, the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Arts Movement, and late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century African American poetic movements.
Black Nature brings to the fore a neglected and vital means of considering race and environment, poetry by African Americans and nature-related poetry as a whole.
Join us for a book discussion on this most important subject! We’ll explore intersections of race, environment, and the “discovery” and ownership of wild places.
A packet of selections from the anthology will be available online and at Newark Library. A copy is available to borrow through Newark Public Library. It’s also available through Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
