Join Boston Poet Laureate Danielle Legros Georges, poets Patrick Sylvain and U-Meleni Mhlaba-Adebo, and percussionist Cornell Coley for a program of texts and sound created within the geographic and political boundaries of the Caribbean and in its diaspora.
Danielle Legros Georges, the current Poet Laureate of the City of Boston, is a professor in the Creative Arts in Learning Division of Lesley University. She also teaches in the Joiner Institute for the Study of War and Social Consequences summer Writer’s Workshop, University of Massachusetts, Boston. Her poems have been widely anthologized, and recent essays of hers have appeared in Others Will Enter the Gates: Immigrant Poets on Poetry, Influences and Writing in America (ed. Abayomi Animashaun) and Anywhere But Here: Black Intellectuals in the Atlantic World and Beyond (eds. Kendahl Radcliffe and Jennifer Scott). She is the author of two volumes of poems Maroon (Curbstone Press, 2001) and The Dear Remote Nearness of You (Barrow Street Books, 2016).
Patrick Sylvain is a Haitian-American writer, essayist and poet, and instructor of Haitian language and culture at Brown University’s Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. He is the author of four books of poems including the bilingual Haitian/English volume Love, Lust & Loss/ Lanmou, anvi, pedans, (Memoire d'Encrier, 2005) and the Haitian-language Masuife (Trilingual Press, 2013). His poems and essays have appeared in numerous anthologies, magazines and reviews, including African American Review, Agni, American Poetry Review, Callaloo, Crab Orchard Review, Haitian Times, Ploughshares, and The Boston Haitian Reporter for which he serves as an opinion editor.
U-Meleni Mhlaba-Adebo is a spoken-word artist, poet, actor, singer, and an adjunct professor of English at Endicott College. She has been recognized for her work by organizations including the Roxbury Community College Teaching and Learning Center, the Boston Public Health Commission Adolescent Wellness Program, and American Idol Underground. Mhlaba-Adebo has performed internationally and at venues including the Boston Opera House, the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, Scullers Jazz Club, the Book Cafe in Zimbabwe, the Horror Cafe in South Africa and Bogobiri in Nigeria. Her most recent work is a volume of poems, Soul Psalms (She Writes Press, 2016).
Cornell Coley is a drummer, dancer and teaching artist whose work draws upon the traditions of West and Central Africa, Cuba and Brazil. He directs the Afro-Latin jazz band Afrika Gente. Coley has a background in arts administration, arts education and arts therapy with long-term clients including the Hyde Square Task Force, Boston Public Schools and Lesley University, where he teaches as an adjunct professor. Coley’s work has been recognized with numerous local and national grants and awards. His solo interactive program A Fascinating Rhythm is popular throughout New England.