Welcome to the Cultural Revolution

Welcome to the Cultural Revolution: How the Poets of Color Shaped Contemporary Poetry

Angela Maria Williams

Three Mondays, March 5-March 19, 1-3 p.m.

Price:

$75 ($65 members)

Books:

The Book of Medicines, Linda Hogan
In Mad Love and War, Joy Harjo
Loose Woman, Sandra Cisneros
My Father Was a Toltec & Other Poems, Ana Castillo
Shake Loose My Skin, Sonia Sanchez
Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni

Poets of color have more freedom to explore identity, race and culture through their work than ever before. Their poetry is legitimized and encouraged at both the undergraduate and graduate levels and is even the touchstone of new experimental forms. This is owed to the latter part of the 20th century when modern poetry was redefined through artistic explosions from writers of color that evolved from the Civil Rights movement and second-wave feminism. This course will focus on the Black Arts Movement, the Chicago Chicana poets and the Native American Renaissance, and the poets whose work drove the cultural revolutions that empowered blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans, driving them to the forefront of American poetry for the first time. Each class will begin with a short lecture on the specific movement each group of poets is associated with and how their contributions revolutionized modern poetic form. We will read two collections from each group and discuss the poems themselves, as well as the background that shaped each poet’s work and how they influenced American poetry and up-and-coming poets today.

ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR

Angela Maria Williams works at Politics & Prose and has been a professional bookseller for a decade. She received her MFA in Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College and her BA in Creative Writing from the University of New Mexico. She has been the managing editor of At-Large Magazine and the editor of Conceptions Southwest, UNM’s literary magazine. Her poems have appeared in Contemporary American Voices, Fickle Muses, Central Avenue, and Sage Trail.