May 11, 2016
As part of our Required Reading series, we share a list of three essential works for each of SAL’s featured writers. Up this time: groundbreaking poet, essayist, and playwright Claudia Rankine. Citizen: An American Lyric (2014) In 1970, Harvard professor Chester Pierce came up the term “micro-aggression” to describe the unconscious dismissals and insults non-black Americans inflict on black people. In […]
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March 3, 2016
We were thrilled to have Sjohnna McCray join us from Savannah, GA for our recent event with Tracy K. Smith and Joshua Roman. Sjohnna’s book, Rapture, was selected by Tracy K. Smith as the winner of the 2015 Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets and is forthcoming from Graywolf Press this April. […]
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February 25, 2016
By Anastacia Renee Tolbert, WITS Writer-in-Residence Tracy K. Smith’s Duende (2007) opens with: This is a poem about the itch. That stirs a nation at night. —”History” […]
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January 27, 2016
By Erin Langner, Sonder Editor & WITS Program Associate The Bushwick Book Club‘s ambition is something to be admired. As a subpar member of a standard kind of book club that meets monthly and always has a movie option for those of us that cannot keep up with the reading, it’s hard for me not […]
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December 21, 2015
On December 1, SAL Associate Director Rebecca Hoogs introduced Srikanth Reddy‘s thought-provoking lecture, “Like a Very Strange Likeness and Pink,” a talk that examined the question of likeness. Reddy spoke as part of a co-presentation of SAL’s Poetry Series and the Bagley Wright Lecture Series on Poetry. By Rebecca Hoogs, SAL Associate Director It is a delight to introduce […]
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December 14, 2015
Black My color is the color of absence, silence. The memory of something you thought was there, but now it’s gone. The color of your mind when you’re in a deep rest. The color of shadows that follow you everywhere you go. My color tastes bitter and icky. My color is lovely. My color is […]
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December 2, 2015
By Erin Langner, WITS Program Associate & Sonder Editor When Linda Pastan and I approached a classroom of The Center School, where she was about to speak, we were three minutes early. A teacher inside, in the gentlest, quietest whisper, asked if we wouldn’t mind waiting outside, for just two of those minutes. The students inside […]
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November 24, 2015
On November 10, Linda Pastan brought her quiet but powerful literary presence to McCaw Hall for SAL’s 2015/16 Poetry Series. SAL Associate Director Rebecca Hoogs introduced her and moderated their conversation that night. It is an honor and delight to introduce Linda Pastan, who is here to celebrate and read from poetry across her long career, including […]
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November 23, 2015
The Sea I kept deep-sea secrets in a little black bag. I carried boats through the toughest storms. I asked the fish where the shark lived. I was rough but calm. I was tired. I knew when the storm would come. I tried to keep the boats away with waterspouts. I tried to keep the […]
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November 3, 2015
Silent The buzz of cyan, teal, turquoise against my eyelids so different, yet so alike Whoosh, I’m gone A shadow of a man needing redevelopment The A-frame taking a spot in my shell of a self then falling away as a spirit the walls close, inward but I am not claustrophobic I am one with […]
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