Guides: Center for African American Poetry and Poetics (CAAPP) & the ULS Collection: Black to the Future

Black to the Future - February 26-29, 2020

poster of black to the future

Wednesday, Feb. 26 at 12 pm
Black to the Future Lecture with Alisha B. Wormsley
Alumni Hall, Connolly Ballroom
Presented by Pitt Jazz Studies Program

Wednesday, Feb. 26 at 5:30 pm
Equipoise Welcome Reception
Alumni Hall, Connolly Ballroom
Presented by the Office of Diversity & Inclusion and Equipiose

Wednesday, Feb. 26 at 6:30 pm
Poetry reading: avery r. young Speaks on His New Visual Poetry Book neckbone
Alumni Hall, Connolly Ballroom
Presented by Pitt Jazz Studies Program

Wednesday, Feb. 26 at 7:30 pm
Performance: avery r. young and de deacon board Present Tubman
Alumni Hall, Connolly Ballroom
Presented by Pitt Jazz Studies Program

Wednesday Feb. 26, 9am through Friday, Feb. 28, 9pm
Black to the Future Art Exhibition
Alumni Hall, Connolly Ballroom
An exhibition of work by visual artists-activists from the University of Pittsburgh, off-campus community, and beyond.

Thursday, Feb. 27 at 6:30 pm
Reading Justin Phillip Reed
Featuring poetry and performances by Tongo Eisen-Martin, Simone White, Jaamil Olawale Kosoko, and special guest, the 2018 National Book Award-winning poet, Justin Phillip Reed.
Henry Heymann Theatre, Lower Level, Stephen Foster Memorial
Presented by Center for African American Poetry and Poetics (CAAPP)

Friday, Feb. 28 at 4:30 pm
Black to the Future Art Reception
Alumni Hall, Connolly Ballroom

Friday, Feb. 28 at 6 pm
Black to the Future Showcase
Alumni Hall, 7th Floor Auditorium
Featuring cross-disciplinary performances by Jari Bradley, poet; K. Henderson, opera singer and poet; Kuumba Ensemble led by Nicole Mitchell Gantt, flutist, composer, Pitt Jazz Studies director; Oronde Sharif, Pitt Africana Studies; and, Jasiri X, Pittsburgh rapper and activist

Friday, Feb. 28 at 7 pm
Black to the Future Post-Showcase Panel Discussion on Black Art and Activism
Alumni Hall, 7th Floor Auditorium
Presented by the Office of Diversity & Inclusion and Equipiose

Saturday, Feb. 29 at 1 pm
Hands-on Community Workshop with KanKouran West African Dance Company
The Alloy Studios, 5530 Penn Ave, East Liberty
Presented by Department of Africana Studies

Saturday, Feb. 29 at 6 pm
Performance: Circle of Praise by KanKouran West African Dance Company
Kelly Strayhorn Theater, 5941 Penn Avenue, East Liberty
Presented by Department of Africana Studies

Saturday, Feb. 29 at 8 pm
The After Party: IN THE OPEN / IN SECRET / A BLACK FUTURES / POETRY PARTY
Hosted by Simone White featuring Tongo Eisen-Martin and Jaamil Olawale Kosoko
Kelly Strayhorn Theater, 5941 Penn Avenue, East Liberty
Presented by the Center for African American Poetry and Poetics (CAAPP)

poster of justin phillip reed

Justin Phillip Reed Poster, courtesy of CAAPP

Reading Justin Phillip Reed
February 27, 2020 - 6:30pm

Poets Simone White and Tongo Eisen-Martin, poet & performance artist Jaamil Kosoko present responses to CAAPP Fellow Justin Phillip Reed's forthcoming book The Malevolent Volume.
Location and Address
Henry Heymann Theatre
4301 Forbes Ave
Pittsburgh, PA 15213

photo of simone white

Simone White, courtesy of CAAPP

The After Party: IN THE OPEN / IN SECRET / A BLACK FUTURES / POETRY PARTY
Saturday, Feb. 29 at 8 pm
Hosted by Simone White featuring Tongo Eisen-Martin and Jaamil Olawale Kosoko
Kelly Strayhorn Theater, 5941 Penn Avenue, East Liberty
Presented by the Center for African American Poetry and Poetics (CAAPP)

House Envy of All the World by Simone White; Bill Marsh (Editorial Coordinator)
Call Number: PS3623.H578874 H68 2010
ISBN: 9781600010712
Publication Date: 2010
Is all black desire corrupt? If American aspiration is linked to the desire to have whiteness, be male and make money, what, now, can a decent person want? Family, death, power, Poetry and blackness--each is implicated in a general failure of perfection and subjected to furious lyric rethinking in Simone White's work; a poetry of ideas where "the whole limbic system [becomes] an event," "decorous" and profane, precise and bewildered. Item number: 31735066383500
Heaven Is All Goodbyes by Tongo Eisen-Martin
Call Number: PS3605.I8275 A6 2017
ISBN: 9780872867451
Publication Date: 2017
This is truly revolutionary poetry. A vortex of images, observations, inspired leaps and free associations spills forth from a choir living in oppression and transience. Moments of political and spiritual convergence, surrealism and blunt materiality, gangsterism and its husk, revolution and perseverance, are captured in the music of metaphor and pure intention. Item number: 31735066383492
Someone's Dead Already by Tongo Eisen-Martin
Call Number: PS3605.I8275 S65 2015
ISBN: 9780988610835
Publication Date: 2015
"Eisen-Martin's syntax lands somewhere between Sphinx and Thelonious; through poem he makes spare, efficient, wild-eyed jazz rubs mud and accountability into the pores of the zeros and ones in the glass and steel city. Throughout SOMEONE'S DEAD ALREADY, I return to the wonder of the writer's economy of language, how deftly the words infuse their amulet casings with blood temperature at the edge of boiling. This work is as hungry as revolution, a necessary, deadly still in these shifting times…"—Marc Bamuthi Joseph Item number: 31735069605610
David Hammons Is on Our Mind by Anthony Huberman (Editor); Tongo Eisen-Martin (Text by); David Hammons (Text by); Fred Moten (Text by)
Call Number: N6537.H3455 D38 2018
ISBN: 9780984960941
Publication Date: 2018
Includes the transcription of three public events: a 1994 lecture by David Hammons (previously unpublished) as well as a poem by Tongo Eisen-Martin and a lecture by Fred Moten, both from 2017. The CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, an exhibition space and research institute in San Francisco, dedicates year-long seasons of discussions and public events to a single artist. In 2016-17, the American artist David Hammons was "on our mind."This book begins with the transcript of a rare artist talk given by Hammons in 1994 at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, on the occasion of his exhibition there. It then introduces a series of photographs the artist sent to the Wattis Institute in 2017, interspersed with texts by the Bay Area poet Tongo Eisen-Martin and the writer and critic Fred Moten. Much like Hammons' work, this publication raises more questions than answers. Rather than functioning as a comprehensive introduction to the artist, David Hammons is on our mind offers visual and textual elements that relate obliquely to the enigmatic artist's oeuvre. Item number: 31735066775358
Curating Live Arts by Dena Davida (Editor); Marc Pronovost (Editor); Véronique Hudon (Editor); Jane Gabriels (Editor)
Call Number: PN1575.5 .C87 2019
ISBN: 9781785339639
Publication Date: 2018
Jaamil Kosoko contributor. Situated at the crossroads of performance practice, museology, and cultural studies, live arts curation has grown in recent years to become a vibrant interdisciplinary project and a genuine global phenomenon. Curating Live Arts brings together bold and innovative essays from an international group of theorist-practitioners to pose vital questions, propose future visions, and survey the landscape of this rapidly evolving discipline. Reflecting the field's characteristic eclecticism, the writings assembled here offer practical and insightful investigations into the curation of theatre, dance, sound art, music, and other performance forms--not only in museums, but in community, site-specific, and time-based contexts, placing it at the forefront of contemporary dialogue and discourse. Item number: 31735066383518
Indecency by Justin Phillip Reed
Call Number: PS3618.E435653 I53 2018
ISBN: 9781566895149
Publication Date: 2018
Indecency is boldly and carefully executed and perfectly ragged. In these poems, Justin Phillip Reed experiments with language to explore inequity and injustice and to critique and lament the culture of white supremacy and the dominant social order. Political and personal, tender, daring, and insightful--the author unpacks his intimacies, weaponizing poetry to take on masculinity, sexuality, exploitation, and the prison industrial complex and unmask all the failures of the structures into which society sorts us. Item number: 31735070621242
The Malevolent Volume by Justin Phillip Reed
Call Number: PS3618.E435653 M25 2020
ISBN: 9781566895927
Publication Date: 2020
Subverting celebrated classics of poetry and mythology and examining horrors from contemporary film and cultural fact, National Book Award winner Justin Phillip Reed engages darkness as an aesthetic to conjure the revenant animus that lurks beneath the exploited civilities of marginalized people. In these poems, Reed finds agency in the other-than-human identities assigned to those assaulted by savageries of the state. In doing so, he summons a retaliatory, counterviolent Black spirit to revolt and to inhabit the revolting. Item number: 31735071723658