Opening the World of Black Poetry: A Furious Flower Syllabus as a Call to Action

• In Event: Friday Roundtable Session 9:45 am
  In Roundtable Session: Performing the Word in the World (Table 3)

Abstract

In 2023, The Furious Flower Poetry Center, the nation's first academic center for Black poetry founded by Dr. Joanne Gabbin, hosted more than 20 scholars and poets at a predominantly White institution to create an open-access curriculum for incorporating Black poetry into classrooms of all ages. The gathering titled, Opening the World of Black Poetry: A Furious Flower Syllabus, was made possible by a grant from the Poetry Foundation. The curriculum created in one week drew from over twenty-five years of poetry anthologies, digitized performances, and works of Black poets and theorists. The Furious Flower Poetry Center hopes you will use this digitized syllabus in your classrooms as a space free of injustice and to support educational possibilities for all.

Author

• Mary Beth Cancienne, James Madison University