<body><div><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=3eW9mU_0vkzFmnq00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=3eW9mU_0vkzFmnq00" width="1200" height="630" >The Furious Flower Poetry Center kicked off its decennial Furious Flower Poetry Conference on Sept. 18 featuring Black poets from around the country — including honorees Kwame Dawes and Elizabeth Alexander — at JMU’s Festival Conference Center to present and hear poetry.The conference ran for four days and consisted of in-person and virtual sessions in the Festival Ballroom, AUBC Club Room and the Memorial Hall Auditorium. The events included panels, banquets, readings and open mic performances from poets and guests. Featured speakers included Furious Flower Center Executive Director Lauren K. Alleyne, JMU Interim Provost Bob Kolvoord and Dean of JMU Libraries Bethany Nowviskie. The poetry readings and open mic performances were free to attendees.For Joanne Gabbin, founder of the Furious Flower Poetry Center and professor emeritus in the JMU English Department, the conference is a homecoming.“It’s like a family reunion for poets,” she said.The first Furious Flower Poetry Conference was in 1994 when Gabbin founded it as a place for Black poets to share their work at JMU. In 2005, JMU officially chartered the Furious Flower Poetry Center, and the conference has been held there ever since, according to its website. The conference explores contemporary trends in Black literature, culture and thought.The Furious Flower Poetry Center is the nation’s first academic center for Black poetry, said Haylee Edwards, JMU graduate and editorial assistant for the Furious Flower Poetry Center. As such, its primary goals are “promoting and supporting Black poets around the country,” as well as “helping get their voices out there, if they aren’t already out there,” Edwards said.As a hub for Black poetry, poets convene at the Furious Flower Poetry Conference to share their work and celebrate the conference’s longstanding traditions, Gabbin said.“It is an opportunity for the next generation of poets,” Gabbin said, adding that young people often describe the conference as “inspirational.”“I think it’s so important to support color,” Gabbin said. She also said for anyone who believes they are ignorant to the world of Black poetry, these poets “have a special way of distilling knowledge” and “genius that will help as all.”The Furious Flower works with JMU’s English department and the College of Arts and Letters, Edwards said, with its goals being “awareness of the artform” and to “push for more diverse voices.”The Furious Flower’s efforts extend into the classroom as well; “The Furious Flower Syllabus Project: Opening the World of Black Poetry” aims to amplify Black poets’ voices in academic settings, according to its website. Resources were compiled by scholars at JMU into a free educational curriculum that will be distributed to classrooms across the country of all ages and levels in order to further education surrounding Black poetry’s history, according to its website.“We’re trying to push for more diverse voices in general, especially in the classrooms and especially in communities where people feel unseen or unheard,” Edwards said.Pulitzer Prize winner, professor and Director of Creative Writing at Emory University Jericho Brown said while at the conference, he learned “so much about the world and about myself, and about Black poetry — which is poetry.”As a Black poet himself, Brown’s work is decorated — he’s appeared in publications such as The Nation, The New Republic, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Time Magazine and The New York Times. His book “The Tradition” has won a Pulitzer Prize, and his first book “Please” (New Issues 2008) won the American Book Award, according to his website.Concerning his writing, Brown said he highlights “the intimacy involved, the vulnerability involved quite naturally in the act of writing.” He added that “writing allows you a way to get it right, all the things you can’t say … you can get them right.”“I think the most important thing is that you be moved, that you have an emotion, and through poetry, have an awareness that you are indeed in the midst of that emotion,” Brown said. “That is the beginning of a real change.”Brown’s advice for aspiring poets or creative writers is to “read as much as possible” and to “go where writers are.” “Attend the Furious Flower Poetry Conference,” he said. “Be at the readings, be at the workshops, be wherever you can be that the poets are — and that will help your poetry.”</div></body>

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Furious Flower Poetry Conference helps ‘push for more diverse voices’

The Furious Flower Poetry Center kicked off its decennial Furious Flower Poetry Conference on Sept. 18 featuring Black poets from around the country — including honorees Kwame Dawes and Elizabeth Alexander — at JMU’s Festival Conference Center to present and hear poetry. The conference ran for four...