Join us on Facebook Live at LEAF Global Arts
https://www.facebook.com/theLEAF.org/
LEAF Global Arts Presents
LEAF Lit Live! Spoken Word Poetry Salon #5
OUR THEME IS DUENDE
Featured Poets
Glenis Redmond, Jahman Hill, S. Erin Batiste, Kassidi Jones
James Navé, emcee
Thursday, April 22, 2021
7 PM ET • 6 PM CT • 5 PM MT • 4 PM PT
Join us on Facebook Live at LEAF Global Arts
https://www.facebook.com/theLEAF.org/
Join us on Facebook Live at LEAF Global Arts
https://www.facebook.com/theLEAF.org/
LEAF Lit Live! Spoken Word Poetry Salon
We have the power to change
the end of the story.
Glenis Redmond
Glenis Redmond is nationally renowned award-winning poet and teaching artist. In 2020 she became a recipient of South Carolina’s highest award, The Governor’s Award for the Arts. Glenis is a Kennedy Center Teaching Artist and a Cave Canem poet and has been the mentor poet for the National Student Poets Program since 2014.
Her essay, ``What Hangs on Trees ``was re-pubished in 2020 by Orion Magazine for their anthology, The Most Radical Thing You Can Do: The Best Political Essays in 20 years.
Author and T&W Board member Tayari Jones selected Glenis Redmond’s essay, “Poetry as a Mirror,” as the runner-up for the 2018 Bechtel Prize. Teachers & Writers Collaborative awards the annual Bechtel Prize to the author of an essay that explores themes related to creative writing, arts education, and/or the imagination. Her essay, On Beauty: The Reluctant Beauty Queen was the 2nd place winner of the Alex Albright non-fiction award through the North Carolina Literary Review.
Redmond’s “Dreams Speak: My Father’s Words” was chosen for third place for the North Carolina Literary Review’s James Applewhite Prize and “Sketch,” “Every One of My Names,” and “House: Another Kind of Field will be published in NCLRin 2019. These poems are about —Harriet Tubman, the most famous conductor of the underground railroad; Harriet Jacobs, who escaped from slavery and became an abolitionist, and the author of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl; and Harriet E. Wilson, who was held as an indentured servant in the North and went on to become an important novelist, businesswoman, and religious speaker. These poems will be published in Glenis’ upcoming chapbook, The Three Harriets and Others by Finishing Line Press in 2021.
Glenis writes about the strength of her Afro-Carolinian roots, while exploring their weighted and palpable histories in South Carolina and North Carolina. Her latest book, The Listening Skin will be published by Four Way Books in 2022.
Jahman Hill
Jahman Hill is an award winning poet, playwright, and professor. In 2018, Jahman claimed the title of 3rd best slam poet in the world, and in 2019 he wrote, produced, and starred in an award-winning one-man show, Black Enough, which played off-Broadway.
Jahman Hill has become a sought after poet internationally. His poetry videos have garnered millions of views online. Jahman is a professor at the University of Alabama where he received Master’s degrees in both Communication Studies and Women’s Studies. The core of Jahman's creative work centers around “The Flourish”, or the idea that Black people are infinitely possible beings.
In addition to his many other accolades, Jahman has participated in and won the LEAF Poetry Slam on numerous occasion. In case you didn’t know. The LEAF Poetry Slam is a professional level Poetry Slam with $1000 grand prize. Twelve top level spoken-word slam poets compete through six rounds. Jahman's range as a writer and a performer has always guaranteed him a win or a place among the top three poets when the evening is over.
S. Erin Batiste (she/her)
S. Erin Batiste (she/her) is an interdisciplinary poet, storyteller, and author of the chapbook Glory to All Fleeting Things. In 2021 this year, she is the recipient of PERIPLUS, Jack Straw Writers, and the dots between fellowships, and is a Writer in Residence at the Studios at MASS MoCA, Prairie Ronde and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation. Her other recent honors include fellowships and support from Cave Canem, Bread Loaf Writers' Conference–Rona Jaffe Foundation, Crosstown Arts, and Callaloo. Batiste is a reader for The Rumpus and her own Pushcart, Best New Poets, and Best of the Net nominated poems are anthologized and appear internationally in Michigan Quarterly Review, Puerto del Sol, and wildness among other decorated journals.
S. Erin Batiste does Black Women’s work. Her chapbook, Glory to All Fleeting Things, declared as "unabashedly honest and honoring her whole truth," and a "daring testament to imagination making the road to freedom" deals with the major themes of Black femininity and feminism, inheritance, nostalgia, and mythology. Batiste's interdisciplinary practice weaves together traditional verse, prose poems, memoir, inherited forms such as games and recipes alongside visually driven works like erasure, collage, archives and other ephemera to trace her matrilineage and interrogate the Black middle class and its devastating domestic failure.
Her poetry accepts the difficult calling of being both canary and witness–looking deeply through the eyes and rendering speakers who reside at the margins of the strange, terrifying, and magnificent space of being born Black, born Woman, born Creative. Batiste is currently at work on her first full length poetry collection, Hoard, which examines the aftermath of the '1980s and '1990s era of malls and suburbs, consumption, late capitalism, Americana and the Black American nuclear family. The places and people who remain, how we make a life beyond.
Kassidi Jones (she/her)
Kassidi Jones (she/her) a poet cautiously representing Connecticut. She is pursuing her Ph.D. in English and African American Studies at Yale. A 2017 Callaloo fellow and a self-proclaimed Scrabble master, Kassidi is an alumna of the Excelano Project, UPenn’s premier spoken word poetry group.
In her article titled My Poetry Is Now Beyonce Approved she says,” I am looking forward to what comes next for the black women writing poems for themselves and for other black women. I foresee more and more poets getting acknowledged for their work. I am hoping for the proper praise to be doled out among the poets who are still trying to break into the poetry world and beyond. And Beyonce has definitely helped by intertwining her music with dazzling imagery and poetry. As it stands, I don’t think raw poetry gets enough credit in pop culture.
But who knows? Maybe we’re on the verge of turning a new leaf. In the meantime, I hope all my black women writers and poets are feeling as inspired and encouraged as I am by this moment. It’s finally our time.” You can find Ms. Jones’ work in Backbone Press, Winter Tangerine, and Crab Fat Magazine. @KassidiJones
James Navé, emcee
James Navé Photo credit: John van Hasselt, Getty Images
James Navé (he/him) has performed for the public well over 10,000 times over his long career as a poet, teacher, and storyteller. As co-founder of the landmark performance company Poetry Alive!, he memorized over 600 poems and has performed shows and workshops in the United States and International Schools throughout West Africa, South America, Asia, and Europe. Navé holds an MFA in Poetry from Vermont College of Fine Arts, and Navé has been the Poetry Slam emcee for Asheville, NC's LEAF Festival, and an advisory team of LEAF Global Arts since 1995. His latest book of poems, The 100 Days, will be published by 3: A Taos Press in late 2021. Navé once owned a pizza restaurant on the coast of Carolina, won a poetry slam at Chicago's Green Mill with a perfect 30 score, and camped out on a rooftop in Manhattan in mid-September so he could watch the Empire State Building, the full moon, and the World Trade Center's two beams of memorial light.
Support our Poets! Suggested donation for this event is 15 dollars, or what you can afford. Your donation will go directly to the poets. Thank you.