Today I stumbled across a great little interview about DC's poetry legacy with Beltway Poetry Quarterly editor, Kim Roberts. Roberts has organized a BPQ panel for AWP called "Four by Four: Beltway Poetry Quarterly Celebrates the Poetic Lineage of the Capitol City." The panel will happen on Saturday, February 5th at 1:30pm. Roberts reminds us how many poets were once based in DC, including Walt Whitman, Ambrose Bierce, and Paul Lawrence Dunbar, and points out that:"The Harlem Renaissance got its start in DC (not in New York--despite the name that movement now goes by), which brought to our city Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Jessie Redmon Fauset, and others."The panel will feature four contemporary DC poets discussing four historical DC poets: Living writers Regie Cabico, Brian Gilmore, Kim Roberts, and Dan Vera will discuss past literary lights Georgia Douglas Johnson (1920s-30s), Sterling A. Brown (active in the 40s and 50s), May Miller (60s and 70s), and Essex Hemphill (70s and 80s).
Kim Roberts will also be signing her own book of poems at AWP, The Kimnama, published on DC-based poetry press, Vrzhu Press.Please see the original interview between Roberts and Joshua Gray here: http://www.examiner.com/poetry-in-washington-dc/beltway-poetry-quarterly-pairs-local-dc-poets-at-awp
1 comment:
Thanks for the post about the panel and Kim's signing. She'll actually be signing her new book too. Which won the 2009 Pearl Prize. It'll be at the Vrzhu/Poetry Mutual booktable at AWP, #G4.
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