“Poetry and Race in America: How the Humanities Engage with Social Problems,” sponsored by University of Pittsburgh Press (UPP) and the new Center for African American Poetry and Poetics (CAAPP), featured poetry readings by Toi Derricotte, Ross Gay, Rickey Laurentiis, Nate Marshall, Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, and Afaa Michael Weaver, and a moderated discussion with the panelists by Terrance Hayes. The event took place on March 21, 2016 at the Frick Fine Arts Auditorium in Oakland, on the University of Pittsburgh campus. Photos by Aimee Colabine Beattie.

For those of you who weren’t able to join us and those of you who want to relive this special evening, here is the full video of the landmark event, Poetry and Race in America. Please wait a few seconds for the video to load.   You can also watch the video full screen here.  

Starrett Poetry Prize winner shares insight into hip hop Nate Marshall, 2014 winner of UPP’s Agnes Starrett Lynch Poetry Prize for his forthcoming collection Wild Hundreds, is also among the editors of the new release The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop. The book was recently highlighted in the Lambda Literary Review. The article includes comments from Marshall and his co-editors. “I think the reality of hip hop is that women and queer people and a lot of folks who we think about being in the margins have always been at the center of the culture,”…

Jack Foley, longtime esteemed California radio host, recently interviewed Rachel Tzvia Back, translator of In the Illuminated Dark: Selected Poems of Tuvia Ruebner. On KPFA radio’s “Cover to Cover,” Back tells Foley that she “felt completely possessed” reading Ruebner’s Hebrew verse, and contacted him saying she “must” translate his poems. In the Illuminated Dark was “a labor of love . . . a privilege and a delight,” she said. Hear the interview: here    

The special Ploughshares issue features selections by Neil Astley, editor of Bloodaxe Books. The poems chosen for this issue aim to bridge the “illogical divide between readerships on either side of the Atlantic,” and hopefully spark a conversation that will invigorate both literary traditions. Included are Pitt poets Aaron Smith, (Blue on Blue Ground and Appetite); Barbara Hamby (Babel, All-Night Lingo Tango and On the Street of Divine Love), and John Hodgen, (Grace and Heaven and Earth Holding Company). The spring 2015 issue is available in print and in digital format on pshares.org