Lesley University MFA Program in Creative Writing, the Boston Public Library, and the Boston Mayor’s Office of Arts & Culture present Poetry for Black Lives: A Reading and Conversation, which showcases contemporary elegies and critical ruminations from the recent volume Revisiting the Elegy in the Black Lives Matter Era (Routledge, 2020). The co-editors of the volume, Sequoia Maner, darlene anita scott, Emily Ruth Rutter, will join former Boston Poet Laureate and contributor to the volume, Danielle Legros Georges, in conversation about the sociopolitical inequities and artistic impulses that compel Black elegy, as well as the roles that artists, activists, and teachers play in the Movement for Black Lives. BPL President David Leonard will introduce this program.

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darlene anita scott is a poet and visual artist whose research explores corporeal performances of trauma and the violence of silence. Her poetry appears in journals including J Journal, Quiddity, and Baltimore Review. Her art is featured in venues including Barren, The Journal and at The Girl Museum, a virtual museum celebrating girls and girlhood. scott’s most recent project is Breathing Lessons, a multimedia exploration of the term good girl and its application to Black girls. She is a co-editor of Revisiting the Elegy in the Black Lives Matter Era.

Sequoia Maner is an assistant professor of English at Spelman College. Her poetry and scholarship have been published in The Feminist Wire, Meridians, Obsidian, The Langston Hughes Review, and elsewhere. She is a co-editor of Revisiting the Elegy in the Black Lives Matter Era.

Emily Ruth Rutter is an Associate Professor of English at Ball State University. She is the author of Invisible Ball of Dreams: Literary Representations of Baseball behind the Color Line (University Press of Mississippi, 2018), The Blues Muse: Race, Gender, and Musical Celebrity in American Poetry (University of Alabama Press, 2018), and the forthcoming Black Celebrity: Contemporary Representations of Postbellum Athletes and Artists (University of Delaware Press, 2022). Along with Tiffany Austin, Sequoia Maner, and darlene anita scott, she co-edited Revisiting the Elegy in the Black Lives Matter Era (Routledge, 2020).

Danielle Legros Georges is a professor of creative of writing, and director of Lesley University’s MFA Program in Creative Writing. Appointed Boston’s second Poet Laureate, her work from 2015—2019 included collaborations with literary and visual artists, museums and galleries. Her honors include fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Boston Foundation, the Black Metropolis Research Consortium, and commissions from the Trustees of Reservations and the Boston Public Library. She is a contributor to Revisiting the Elegy in the Black Lives Matter Era (Routledge, 2020).