A story about a strong and enlightened woman who shaped much and many. BEI fellow Elizabeth Cunningham was given room to grow in Olga’s school and then room literally as daughter-in law at High Valley Center. BEI was hosted at High Valley for a retreat and we all have a...
Conversations around the Green Fire are 10-20 minute original videos from in-depth interviews, short presentations, and bonus Green Fire footage. Connect with ideas from leading thinkers, as the Center for Humans and Nature continue the dialogue spurred by the Green Fire documentary. The Emmy award-winning documentary film Green Fire: Aldo...
Based on a photo of two summer squash by Edward Weston that hangs in the Yale Art Gallery, the poem was originally commissioned for an exhibit of poems inspired by works in that collection. Here is the poem. Conversation Edward Weston’s “Squash,” 1936 “Delve for me, delve down, delve past...
A poem inspired by his daughter goes nicely in front of a saxophonist Stan Strickland on Radio Boston. The poem titled, “Jazz People” is about little people who live inside instruments and come to life when the instrument is played. A month earlier Regie was broadcast live from the TEDxBoston...
(Dawson)We have on the phone BEI fellow and scholar, author, professor, and Iowa’s Poet Laureate, Mary Swander to talk to her about her insights on performance. At this year’s Black Earth Institute annual gathering of fellows and scholars we will be focusing on all types of performance and their place...
Today we are here at Brigit Rest, the home of the Black Earth Institute in Black Earth, Wi and we are speaking to one of the original fellows of the Black Earth Institute, Dr. Deborah Wood Holton from DePaul University School for new Learning.
I am somewhere between Ghana and Colorado, gushing over the last volume of Scalped, a crime noir set on a fictional Indian reservation. I discover several Ga, Asante, and Twi phrase books in a shop at Elmina Castle. I find the 1964 Pocket Poets edition of Negro Verse edited by...
Since I am an African American (although I prefer Black American) and I write poetry, I assume my poetry is African American. I know, so essentialist. But, my family has been in the United States for at least seven generations–mostly in the South (Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana)—the Delta. To me,...