The English Department at Miami University is proud to announce the first Marjorie Cook Poetry Festival & Conference.

In conjunction with the Marjorie Cook Poetry Festival of readings by nationally prominent African American poets, Miami University's creative writing program will host a conference on "Diversity in African American Poetry."

In a recent panel discussion regarding "What's African American about African American Poetry," poet-scholar Harryette Mullen warned: "In our anxiety to embody or represent authentic black identity, we may impoverish our cultural heritage and simplify the complexity of our historical experience. As poets and as people of African descent, we are in danger of only performing blackness, rather than exploring the infinite permutations of our lived experience and creative imagination as black people." Surveying the flourishing poetic landscape, we conclude that many American poets of African descent have negotiated such dangers successfully. All of the most visible schools of contemporary poetic practice include distinguished African-American poets. There are also many successful African American poets whose work does not fit easily within any of the categories by which American poetry has been sorted by critics and publicists. Our conference seeks to explore the complex variety of experiences, expressions, experiments, and influences represented in "African American poetry" and thus prevent this overarching category from obscuring the stylistic diversity of individual artists or imposing an identity politics upon those who may prefer to define their writing according to other criteria. Papers and panels that will help us foster an appreciation of diversity in African American poetry are welcome.

A registration form for the conference is available in Adobe .pdf format. Please read the submission guidelines for our call for papers, and our list of featured participants.