Celebrating the worlds of Black poetry
Arts and Culture
SUMMARY: Renowned poets, emerging voices, scholars and educators gathered at JMU from across the globe for Furious Flower IV. They came to perform their work, share scholarship, celebrate achievement, mentor and be mentored, and praise Furious Flower Poetry Center for its instrumental role in establishing a Black poetic community since its first conference in 1994. Once the newcomers at earlier conferences, many veterans are now the leaders guiding the next generation of poets.
“Welcome home, family. This is the Black poetry planet. This is homecoming. This is where we come together to affirm ourselves.” — Joanne Gabbin, Furious Flower Poetry Center founder and professor emerita of English
“We gather at Furious Flower for the fourth time in as many decades to celebrate Black Poets and to lift up Black poetry, which offers a language for that which is often unlanguageable and illuminates new ways of visioning our world.” — McKinley Melton, Furious Flower Poetry Center board president
“I can't repeat enough how energizing and hopeful and effervescent this conference [is]… We think of Black poetry at the Furious Flower Poetry Center as a conversation across generations and continents, and our gaze is firmly oriented, not only toward the legacy, but also toward the future.” — Rita Dove, former U.S. and Virginia Poet Laureate, leading the Laureate Reading
“… gratitude is not a sentiment. It's not just a feeling. It's an action. … to give back, to make space for others, to encourage others, to always recognize that you never get here on your own, people behind you, people in front of you, people guiding you.” — Kwame Dawes, Lifetime Achievement Award recipient and conference honoree
“We are taught that, being a poet, you are in your house alone, doing your work. And that is not the African way. … What Furious Flower is doing by bringing the Black diasporic poet tradition together in one room is the richest thing I've seen in 1,000 years. They tell us we don't have connections with each other once we cross the water, but, oh my gosh!” — Nikky Finney, Lifetime Achievement Award recipient
“Well, this is extraordinary. We've all been in a lot of rooms. We've been in a lot of homes, we've been on a lot of streets, we've been a lot of places. We've sung a lot of songs, we've made some bad rhymes, we've acted out our lives in pieces. But what I think we know tonight is that there is no love like Black poet love…” — Elizabeth Alexander, Lifetime Achievement Award recipient and conference honoree
