SHELF LIFE—Music, Grace & Grit: Black Voices in Verse
Wednesday 15 December 2021
Poets Ashley M. Jones (Reparations Now!), Khalisa Rae (Ghost in a Black Girl’s Throat), and Crystal Wilkinson (Perfect Black) confront their complex Southern inheritance, mourning the horrors of racism while celebrating the sweetness of Black love and language. Join us as they read from and discuss their latest collections with moderator Valencia Robin.
“Ashley M. Jones is a genius in how she wields, innovates, and wades through a bounty of poetic forms with a sense of mastery, levity, and play.”—Tiana Clark, author of I Can’t Talk About the Trees Without the Blood
“[Ghost in a Black Girl’s Throat] is not just one all fans of poetry should read; it’s one we should be assigning in schools.”—Gabino Iglesias, PANK Magazine
“Crystal Wilkinson’s Perfect Black is powerful witch-work. Read this book and swerve, in Wilkinson’s ‘perfect cursive,’ along paths ancestral and deliciously strange.”―Kiki Petrosino, author of White Blood: A Lyric of Virginia