A Home for the Heart to Live In: A Cave Canem Poetry Reading
CityLit Project invites you to a Sunday afternoon of poetry showcasing two celebrated poets Yona Harvey (You Don’t Have to Go to Mars to Love) and Brionne Janae (Blessed are the Peacemakers), and an ensemble of regional Cave Canem poets curated by Fellow Reginald (Reggie) Harris (Autobiography) on December 3, 2023, at the Motor House, 120 W. North Avenue, Baltimore, MD from 2-4 p.m. in the Main Theater. Urban Reads Bookstore is the event bookseller. The event is FREE. Registration is requested: https://citylitproject.salsalabs.org/cavecanem23
A Home for the Heart to Live In signifies the return of a favorite annual gathering of Cave Canem poets and poet lovers at a venue new to the series, the arts-centric Motor House. Long considered a reunion of poets, New York based Harris, formerly of Baltimore and long-time partner of CityLit, curated the assembly of noteworthy poets to include, Lillian-Yvonne Bertram, (Travesty Generator) longlisted for the 2020 National Book Award for Poetry, whose new chapbook written with AI, A Black Story May Contain Sensitive Content won the 2023 Diagram/New Michigan chapbook contest, Jadi Z. Omowale (The Goddess in the Girl), Hermine Pinson, poet, songstress and a member of the Wintergreen Women’s Writers Collective, Lauren Russell, (What’s Hanging on the Hush), Steven Leyva (The Understudy’s Handbook) and Teri Ellen Cross Davis (a more perfect Union) among distinguished regional poets.
Cave Canem, a foundation dedicated to nurturing and propelling the careers of Black poets, was co-founded by Cornelius Eady and Toi Derricotte – who’s work the series is titled after. The return of this gathering is CityLit’s measure to highlight and support the many fellows, widely-published and accomplished, in this region, including Abdul Ali, Hayes Davis and Brian Gilmore.
A Guggenheim recipient, Yona Harvey’s latest work includes co-writing Marvel Comics’ World of Wakanda – in collaboration with Roxane Gay, a companion series to the bestselling Black Panther comic, and Black Panther & the Crew, with author Ta-Nehisi Coates. She is the current Tammis Day Professor of Poetry in the Department of English Language and Literature at Smith College. Of Harvey’s work poet Afaa M. Weaver states, “… Harvey’s brilliant lyric lives in the resistance of black women whose presence on this soil is now in its fifth century. In You Don’t Have to Go to Mars for Love, Yona Harvey shows how an original poetic lives in the marrow of the immortal bones of ancestry. The events of her life have moved the poet to write fiercely of her children and of loss, as well as the failures of the country where she was born.”
Brionne Janae, a ’23 NEA Fellow and Hedgebrook alum is a poet and teaching artist from Brooklyn, who is also the podcast co-host of: The Slave is Gone alongside poet Jericho Brown and Rogue Scholar Aífe Murray. Off the page they go by Breezy. Their latest work Because You Were Mine, confronts unsettled waters in which “Survivors, queer folks, and readers of poetry will find recognition and solace in these hard-wrought poems—poems that honor survivorship, queer love, parent wounds, trauma, and the complexities of familial blood.”
In a world where reading poetry as a solitary endeavor was a balm to the soul during pandemic years, we have learned poems spoken out loud in a roomful of word lovers is equally celebrated. In the words of Harvey from “Sonnet For a Tall Flower Blooming at Dinnertime”: “You are the most beautiful dark that hosts the most private sorrows & feeds the hungriest ghosts.” If home is a heart we live in, CityLit is a place to land. Join us for a special Sunday afternoon of poetry where we showcase a spectacular round up of poets.
