Women’s History Month Poetry Reading

Women’s History Month Poetry Reading

at the Virgil Carr Center  featuring:

Detroit’s Poet Laureate Naomi Long Madgett
Poets Hilda Vest and Marilynn Rashid
Poet Melba Joyce Boyd in concert with jazz bassist, Marion Hayden

Co-sponsored by the Arts League of Michigan and Wayne State University’s Department of Africana Studies.
Free and open to the public.

In addition to reading their original works, the poets will recite poetry by significant women poets Frances E. W. Harper, the nineteenth century abolitionist and woman’s rights activist, the Pulitzer-prize-winning-poet Gwendolyn Brooks, and nationally acclaimed poet, Lucille Clifton.

Naomi Long Madgett is Detroit’s second poet laureate and winner of several awards including the Governor of Michigan’s Artist Award. She is the author of nine books of poetry and the memoir, Pilgrim Journey. She is the founder and editor of Lotus Press, and editor of Adam of Ife: Poetry In Praise of Black Men. Hilda Vest, a Detroit native, is the author of Sorrow’s End and is a former editor of Broadside Press. Marilynn Rashid is a also a Detroit native, a noted poet and a lecturer in the Department of Classical and Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures at Wayne State University, where she teaches Spanish. Melba Joyce Boyd is the author of 13 books, nine of which are books of poetry. She is a Distinguished University Professor at WSU, and has received several awards for her work. Her most recent book, Roses and Revolutions: The Selected Writings of Dudley Randall, received a 2010 Library of Michigan Notable Book Award and was nominated for a 2010 NAACP Image Award in Literature. She will perform her poetry with original compositions by bassist Marion Hayden, a lecturer in Jazz Studies at the University of Michigan.

Authors will be available for a book signing after the reading. For more information call: 313-965-8430 or 313-577-2321.
The Virgil Carr Center is located at 311 E. Grand River,  Detroit, MI.