Massachusetts Statewide Poetry Calendar 2

How we can join together across borders of all kinds to build vibrant communities? This question is at the heart Naomi Shihab Nye s poems. It is also the question that will serve as the focus of No Human is Illegal, a community conversation with Naomi Shihab Nye on Thursday, September 28, 2017.

This event is sponsored by The Clemente Course in the Humanities, Worcester, with support from Mass Humanities and the Worcester Art Museum. Now in its fourth year serving Worcester, Clemente offers accredited college-level instruction to educationally and economically disadvantaged adults at no cost. Participants study literature, art history, moral philosophy, and U.S. History in a welcoming community setting.

Join us for an evening of history, poetry and music.  

The program is a poetic and musical dedication to the unwavering persistence shared in three literary giants:  Maria Stewart (1803-1879), David Walker (c.1797-1830) and Samuel Allen (1917-2015).

Maria Stewart was the first woman to speak to a mixed-gender audience in public to address political topics. David Walker wrote and published An Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World.  As orators and publishers, both contributed to the African American literary canon. Maria Stewart and David Walker were good friends and neighbors on Joy Street.  After David died, Maria often quoted him and his efforts to unite black people. 

 

Samuel Allen, whose pen name was Paul Vesey, began his literary career in Europe where he was a contemporary of Richard Wright and James Baldwin.  First recognized in Europe in the late 1940s and early 1950s, his reputation spread to the U.S. in the 1960s.  His poetry books include Ivory Tusks and Other Poems and Paul Vesey’s Ledger.  Allen served on the Board of the Museum of African American History for over ten years.

 

L’Merchie Frazier, Director of Education, Museum of African American History will provide historical context.  Castle of Our Skins musicians will perform the work of black composers including String Quartets by Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson. Spoken word artist, Regie Gibson, will recite original poetry and select readings from the pens of Stewart, Walker and Allen.