Fugitive Poetry Pedagogies for the People

• In Event: Archive to Unforget: Educational Geographies of Remembering, Reclaiming & the Recovery of Our Collective Memory

Abstract

Building on the large Black Arts Movement legacy of North Philadelphia’s Larry Neal and inspired by the pedagogical project of June Jordan’s Poetry for the People, Fugitive Poetry Pedagogies for the People is an emerging place-based poetic research collaborative that explores documenting Black creative community literacies and nurtures local Black teaching artist pedagogical skill-sets within a cross-institutional collaborative framework. The project derives from the community leadership of Friends of the Tanner House, a Black heritage organization that provides family-centered artistic, intellectual, and cultural programming that reflects the rich Black cultural wealth of North Philadelphia. Black Arts movement poet, essayist, and educator Larry Neal served as the historical figure at the center of the Tanner House’s recently offered Any Day Now Creative Writing Series, as Neal professed throughout his career that the soulwork of Black writing “must be taken to the people in the most exciting fashion possible.” (Neal & Biswas, 2024) Informed by reactivating this fugitive pedagogical tradition (Givens, 2021), our experimental community-based research extends across spheres of culturally-sustaining, justice-oriented educational practice, prioritizing a deep commitment to historicizing and archiving Black literary pedagogical principles to inform emerging best practices in serving Philadelphia’s Black working-class students, families, and neighborhoods. We are holding space to awaken Black youth to the power of self-directed consequential writing and composition (Everett, 2018) while also supporting multigenerational neighborhood-based Black cultural workers to recognize themselves as skilled facilitators of rich, empowering community learning experiences. Such is where June Jordan’s blueprint of Poetry for the People (1995) enters, a celebration of a how-to guide informing guidelines for creating trust and community in shared study, advice on teaching and creating meaningful syllabi, and providing wise culturally-validated, dignity-conferring resources. CUNY’s Lost & Found Humanities Series (see example of Jordan et.al, 2017) serves as a model of inspiration for recovering / (re)membering / reclaiming the poetics, politics, and pedagogy surfaced within the creation of visionary teaching materials, referencing a synonymous time of institution/community experiments in an era of increased global social unrest.


References


Everett, S. (2018). “Untold stories”: Cultivating consequential writing with a Black male
student through a critical approach to metaphor. Research in the Teaching of English,
53(1), 34-57.


Givens, J. R. (2021). Fugitive pedagogy : Carter G. Woodson and the art of Black teaching
(First Harvard University Press paperback edition). Harvard University Press.


Jordan, J. (1995). June Jordan’s Poetry for the People : a revolutionary blueprint (L. Muller, S.
Bright, & Poetry for the People (Organization), Eds.). Routledge.

Jordan, J., Alcalay, A., Morgan, K. T., Lawrence, S., Mangum, M., & City University of New York
Center for the Humanities. (2017). “Life studies,” : 1966-1976 (C. T. Reed & T. Shalev,
Eds.). Center for the Humanities, the Graduate Center, The City University of New York.

Neal, L., & Biswas, A. (2024). Any day now : toward a black aesthetic. David Zwirner Books.

Rogers, C. R. (2023). Storying a Black Village Poetics of Landscape and Literacies in West
Philadelphia (Doctoral dissertation, University of Pennsylvania).


The Black Atlas: Reimagining Space and Resistance Through Green Book Methodologies
Jessica Lee Stovall (jlstovall@wisc.edu), Jada Young (jdyoung5@wisc.edu), Hailey Schock (bikky2135@gmail.com)

Author

• Christopher R. Rogers, Haverford College