Cave Canem is a home for the many voices of African American poetry and is committed to cultivating the artistic and professional growth of African American poets. For more on Cave Canem, visit http://www.cavecanempoets.org/
This workshop will represent the first Cave Canem workshop to be hosted in the South, and it reflects the organization's commitment to developing the work of African American poets no matter where they are.
The event is being mounted through a partnership between the South Carolina Poetry Initiative, whose commitment to promoting the writing and reading of poetry in the state of South Carolina, and Cave Canem. The event will hold to the fundamental principles and practices that have made the Cave Canem model so successful over the years. The tutors are either Cave Canem fellows or Cave Canem faculty, and thus constitute some of the best poets working in America today.
This three-day workshop will be led by SC-born poet, Nikky Finney, and award-winning poet, Patricia Smith, both of whom have been Cave Canem faculty in the past. The third tutor will be Frank X Walker, a gifted poet and writer, who is a Cave Canem fellow. The event will be hosted by poet, Kwame Dawes, a past faculty member of Cave Canem and director of the South Carolina Poetry Initiative.
This three-day workshop will take place at the Columbia Museum of Art, a perennial partner with the SC Poetry Initiative on many projects. Starting in February, the Museum will be mounting an exhibition of African American art titled, The Chemistry of Color: Contemporary African-American Artists (February 05, 2010 - May 09, 2010), allowing the Cave Canem South workshop to make use of that exhibit. Poetry written in response to the art and in the workshop will be published in a chapbook anthology, edited by Kwame Dawes and published by Stepping Stone Press, the PI's chapbook Imprint. On another date, the PI will host a Confluence session "The Chemistry of Color: Ekphrasis", launching the chapbook at which participants from the workshop will read their work written in response to the art.
Registration for the event is mandatory. The registration fee is $30.00 and registration forms must be received by January 30th of 2010. See the event program for more information as well as a schedule of the events.
Click
here for the event program
Click here for the registration
form
