Thursday, September 18

Afternoon Conferees arrive, check in, and find dinner
(advice and directions provided)

6:30 - 8:00 pm Cash Bar (Marcum Center)

8:00 pm Featured Reading (Marcum Center, Room 186)
Elizabeth Alexander, Lorenzo Thomas

10:30 pm Featured Reading (Marcum Center, Room 186)
Tracie Morris, Quincy Troupe

Friday, September 19

All day Complimentary beverages available (Marcum Center)

9:00 - 10:15 am Concurrent Panel Presentations (Marcum Center)

A. Collection, Consumption, & Recollection (Room 180)

Andrew Osborn, Whitman College
Curating Difficulties in Melvin B. Tolson’s Harlem Gallery

Deborah M. Mix, Kalamazoo College
Consuming Experimentalism: Harryette Mullen’s S*PeRM**K*T

Heather Buchanan-Gueringer, Schoolcraft College
The Poetry of Paradise Valley Days: Anthologies as Collective Memory

B. Formal Arrangements: Marilyn Nelson, Rita Dove, and Elizabeth Alexander (Room 184)

David Ross Anderson, University of Louisville
Marilyn Nelson and the Search for Tradition: Cultural History and Literary Form in The Homeplace and Carver

Georgina Dodge, Ohio State University
Braiding Lives in Rita Dove’s Thomas and Beulah

C. Missing Pieces: In the Shadow of Celebrated Black Poetry (Room 186)

Mendi Lewis Obadike, Duke University

Evie Shockley, Wake Forest University
"No Body Waiting for Its Metaphor": White Bodies in the Shadow of the Black Aesthetic

10:30 - Noon Panel Poetry Readings (Marcum Center, Room 186)
Jeffrey Allen, James Richardson, Timothy Seibles, Honoree Jeffers,
Crystal Williams

12:15 - 1:45 pm Lunch – included in conference fee (Marcum Center, Rooms 154-158)
Plenary Lecture by Lorenzo Thomas

2:15 - 3:30 pm Concurrent Panel Presentations (Marcum Center)

D. Authenticities (Room 184)

Tyrone Williams, Xavier University
The Authenticity of Difference—or the Authentication of Difference: That ‘curious thing’

Tracie Morris, Sarah Lawrence College
What’s African about American Poetry?

Michael Bibby, Shippensburg University
“Patterns Traced Upon the Sea”: Prosodies of the (Color) Line in African American Poetics

E. Performance & Pedagogy (interactive presentations, Room 180)

Mary Weems, Cleveland State University
I Speak from the Wound in My Mouth: Public Education and the Imagination-Intellect

Gabrielle Civil, College of St. Catherine

Rosamond S. King, Rutgers University
Making/Reading/Performing African American Poetry

F. Who’s Zoomin’ Who?: Deconstructing the White Critical Gaze (Room 186)

Herman Beavers, University of Pennsylvania

Honorée Jeffers, University of Oklahoma

James Richardson, Morehouse College

4:00 - 5:30 pm Featured Reading (Marcum Center, Room 186)
Terrance Hayes, Natasha Trethewey, C. S. Giscombe

5:45 - 7:45 pm Dinner (advice and directions available)

8:00 pm Featured Reading (Hall Auditorium)
Harryette Mullen, Nathaniel Mackey, Sonia Sanchez

10:30 - Midnight Open Mike Readings (Marcum Center)

Saturday, September 20

All day Complimentary beverages available (Marcum Center)

9:00 - 10:15 am Concurrent Panel Presentations (Marcum Center)

G. Musical Influences & Analogies (Room 180)

Benjamin Frederick Lee, Oberlin College
Hip Hop L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E: Another Problem of Artifice and Authenticity

Kimberly N. Ruffin, Bates College
Putting Blues and Jazz in Place: Musical Environments in the Poetry of Jayne Cortez and Sterling Plumpp

Jennifer Drake, Indiana State University
Post-Soul Poetics, Fugal Aesthetics: Elizabeth Alexander’s Antebellum Dream Book

H. Dialectical, Vernacular, & Ordinary Language (Room 184)

Carmen Gillespie, University of Toledo
Poetry and Politics: Slam, Washington D.C., and African American Vernacular Agency

Kathy Lou Schultz, University of Pennsylvania
"Freer and larger than dialect?" Black Vernacular Practice and Modernism from Dunbar to Mullen

Marvin Gladney, University of Denver
Wittgenstein, Ordinary Language, and African American Poetry

I. Internationality, Diaspora, & Symbiosis (Room 186)

Aldon L. Nielsen, Penn State University
Jayne Cortez: A Dance for the Red Pepper Poet

Richard Zumkhawala-Cook, Shippensburg University
James Brown in London, Bessie Smith in Glasgow: The Poetics of Black America in Linton Kwesi Johnson and Jackie Kay

Lorrie N. Smith, St. Michael’s College
The Symbiosis of Page and Stage in Contemporary Black Poetry

10:30 - Noon Panel Poetry Readings (Marcum Center, Room 186)
Mendi Lewis Obadike, Evie Shockley, Anthony Walton, Tyrone Williams, Kim Hunter

12:15 - 1:45 pm Lunch – included in conference fee (Marcum Center, Rooms 154-158)

2:00 - 3:00 pm Break-out Roundtable Discussions (Marcum Center)

1. Experimentalism in African American Poetry (Room 180)

Moderator: Keith Tuma

Jeff Allen
Nathaniel Mackey
Reginald Shepherd
Evie Shockley
Lorenzo Thomas
Tyrone Williams

2. Formalism in African American Poetry (Room 186)

Moderator: Annie Finch

Wanda Coleman
Terrance Hayes
Dante Micheaux
James Richardson

3. Narrative in African American Poetry (Room 184)

Moderator: Andrew Osborn

Kim Hunter
Mendi Lewis Obadike
Tim Siebles
Anthony Walton

3:15 - 4:15 pm Roundtable Discussion – with all participants (Marcum Center)

4:30 - 6:00 pm Cash Bar (Marcum Center)

5:00 - 6:00 pm A Photographic Celebration of Contemporary African American Poets (Marcum Center)
Photographs by Lynda Koolish

6:15 - 7:45 pm Dinner – included in conference fee (Marcum Center, Rooms 154-158)

8:00 pm Featured Reading (Marcum Center, Room 186)
Wanda Coleman, Reginald Shepherd

10:00 pm Dance (Miami Inn)

Sunday, September 21

6:30 am Vans leave for Cincinnati (CVG) and Dayton (DAY) Airports.
Estimated airport arrival time: 7:30 (CVG), 8:00 (DAY)

8:00 am Vans leave for Cincinnati (CVG) and Dayton (DAY) Airports.
Estimated airport arrival times: 9:00 (CVG), 9:30 (DAY)

9:30 am Vans leave for Cincinnati (CVG) and Dayton (DAY) Airports.
Estimated airport arrival time: 10:30 (CVG), 11:00 (DAY)

11:00 am Vans leave for Cincinnati (CVG) and Dayton (DAY) Airports.
Estimated airport arrival times: 12:00 (CVG), 12:30 (DAY)