Nov 10: The Black Matter is Life: Poetry for Engagement and Overcoming – “We Go On Loving”

The Black Matter is Life: Poetry for Engagement and Overcoming examines the work of well-known and little-known Black poets to explore and discuss the rich tradition and innovation found in African American poetry.

Join us in partnership with Seacoast Outright for a special live event at The Players’ Ring featuring poems by Black, LGBTQ+ poets.

Poetry is a powerful art form, one that offers profound insights into what it means to be human. Through the creative, succinct, and melodious use of language, poets render into words their joys, their challenges, their vulnerabilities, and their discoveries, thus providing shape and meaning to the human connection and shared emotional experience.

This program is designed to build bridges across the racial divide by introducing the audience to the writings of a number of African American poets whose work has shone a light on a rich cultural heritage that has often gone unexplored. We ask the audience to consider how African American poetry provides tools for healing our nation’s deep racial wounds.

With special student poets: Ki Odums, Lydia Osei

“We Go On Loving” explores how young people in BIPOC and LGBTQ communities love one another, love themselves, and love their communities by looking at the literary works of Black LGBTQ+ poets.

There are an estimated 35 million BIPOC youths in the United States who identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual and other youths identifying as transgender, intersex, or questioning, who continually face many challenges and may feel isolated, alienated, and fearful as they try to navigate society in their emerging awareness of their sexual, gender and race identity.

For this program, submissions from student poets were selected by a committee to explore what it means to hold these identities in our society today.

Space is limited for the in-person event; click here to register .