Events
May 11 at 6:00pm, BOOK LAUNCH, Life Force Arts Center, 1609 W Belmont Avenue, Chicago Illinois.
Brigit: Sun of Womanhood – an anthology edited by Patricia Monaghan and Michael McDermott.
May 19, 3:30-7 p.m Patricia Spears Jones performing with the composer/musican Jason Hwang at the Tribute to Jayne Cortez at the Brecht Forum. Other musicians and poets include Mariposa, Bern Nix, and Bill Cole’s Untempered Ensemble with Warren Smith, et al.
Organized by Ras Moshe, 451 West Street, New York City, NY
June 1, Patricia Spears Jones at Marathon Reader at Jane Frelicher exhibition at Tibor & Nagy on 57th Street, NYC.
Patricia is a Mentor for The Poetry Project’s new fellowship program: Emerge Surface Be.
“Lodestar” an essay on Jayne Cortez will be published in The Black Scholar.
New poems posted at http://brooklynrail.org/2013/05/poetry
AWP Panel “Across The Class Divide” proceedings forthcoming in Ocean State Review, University of Rhode Island.
Patricia’s poems are also included in now controversial Angles of Ascent: African American Contemporary Poetry (W.W. Norton).
John Price’s memoir is just out this month, May 2013.
Daddy Long Legs: the Natural Education of a Father
John is an Emeritus BEI Fellow. Congratulations, John.
“When Dante wandered lost in a dark wood midway through the journey of life, he was led back onto the path by the poet Virgil. John Price was led out of his own dark wood by less famous guides—his rambunctious sons, his patient wife, a wise grandmother, countless wild creatures, and the Midwestern prairie. With grace and wit, he tells in these pages the story of how the love of people and land restored his sense of purpose, his courage in the face of loss, and his joy in living. It is an ancient story, made fresh.” –Scott Russell Sanders, author of Earth Works: New& Selected Essays
Marcella Durand will be reading on Saturday June 1, at 8:30 am at the ASLE (Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment) conference in Lawrence, Kansas.
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Our Mission
Black Earth Institute encourages awareness of the arts as a means of promoting a progressive, inclusively spiritual and environmentally aware society.
The organization gathers artists and audience members to further understanding of the role of the artist as bringing forth wisdom from beyond the self.
Black Earth Institute promotes the oracle and orator, griot and druid, scientist and prophet, priest and priestess.
We oppose the current definition of art as a commercial product derived from exploitation of personality and rewarded by celebrity and market status.
We uphold the arts as a sacred path to wisdom, and we celebrate the artist as a seeker whose work benefits the entire human community.
Finally, the emblem includes two leaves of burr oak, native to the American prairies and able to survive prairie fires because of its thick bark. Together, these images speak to us of intercultural connection, respect for the environment, and acknowledgement of the sacred.
Emblem design by Kathleen Monaghan
Read MoreIn Memoriam
A Tribute to Patricia Monaghan 1946 – 2012, cofounder of Black Earth Institute
Patricia Monaghan, co-founder of the Black Earth Institute passed on in the arms of her beloved husband on November 11, 2012. Patricia was a scholar, poet, educator, spiritual pioneer and practitioner, and activist. She passed away at home at Brigit Rest after a 2 year journey of hope and disappointment with cancer. She did everything she could to continue life and work and lived fully during this period but ultimately left us.
In co-founding BEI along her husband Michael McDermott, Patricia followed the path in the way she had done so many other things. As a scholar and an artist she opened doors and portals to a different world, different values and different history. More than this she created programs, networks and organizations. Black Earth Institute was such a vision she saw and then created. She was concerned to have artists serve the role they had in earlier times before art was a function of commoditization and fame. Black Earth exists to promote that role of the artists as a powerful voice for justice.
Read MoreRe-forging the links between art and spirit, earth and society.
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