National Poetry Month: Celebrating Outspoken Speakers, Amena Brown and Dr. Joshua Bennett
/Poetry is the language of the soul. It most clearly conveys the murkiness, beauty, and horridness that is the human condition. Throughout all of time, we, as a nation, as a world, have needed poets. Their words and thinking have named, illuminated, confronted, and deconstructed those things we have long buried in the dark crevices of our soul and history. Most importantly, we have needed poets to chart a way forward. They continue to imagine an alternative way of being and living for us all. And during this 15th anniversary of National Poetry Month and thereafter, we are grateful.
We honor the voices and work of Outspoken speakers and poets, Amena Brown and Dr. Joshua Bennett. Together, their work has investigated what it means to be human and presented an all-encompassing vision for the future.
As the author of five spoken word albums—her latest entitled, Amena Brown Live—and the podcast host of HER with Amena Brown, Amena Brown interweaves humor, rhyme and storytelling to ask questions about the relationship between faith, gender, race, power, and music. Undergirding all those questions is a question about the self, who she is, the kind of society she must navigate to survive and thrive, and what she must do to conquer herself and the world. Through her poems, interviews, and stories, Brown ultimately commits herself to celebrating and amplifying the diverse voices and lived experiences of women of color.
Poem: First Lines by Amena Brown
Performance: Here, Breathing
Scholar, poet, and activist, Dr. Joshua Bennett, is the author of The Sobbing School—which was a National Poetry Series winner and a finalist for an NAACP Image Award—as well as Being Property Once Myself: Blackness and the End of Man and Owed. As an Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College, Bennett’s literary work explores the intricacies of blackness in an effort to reimagine and repair our world. His work does not retreat. It comes near, sits close, and asks hard questions—about how we love one another, harm one another, and do justice. His work is not only “irrevocably beautiful”, but “unquestionably political” art. And offers no apology.
Performance: Say It, Sing It If The Spirit Leads (After Vievee Francis)
If you’d like to hear more about how you could book one of our poets for a custom poem and live performance for your next event, please reach out to us!