Keeping It Real & Imagining It with Afaa Michael Weaver

Beginning with a look at a poem by Sterling Brown, this interactive craft lecture with 2014 Kingsley Tufts Award winner Afaa Michael Weaver will consider the challenges and rewards of using vernacular language, including the resulting identity processes and perceptions of both writer and reader.

Afaa Michael Weaver is the author of thirteen poetry collections, including A Hard Summation (2014), and The Plum Flower Trilogy: City of Eternal Spring (2014), winner of the 2014 Kingsley Tufts Award, The Government of Nature (2013), and The Plum Flower Dance: Poems 1985 to 2005 (2008), winner of the 2008 Paterson Award. His many honors and awards include an NEA Fellowship, a Pew fellowship, three Pushcart Prizes, and a Fullbright scholar appointment. He is alumnae professor of English at Simmons College in Boston.

Presented as part of the Emerging Poets Fellowship public lecture series, with support from the Jerome Foundation.