Join us in celebrating the publication of Poet Laureate Marcus Amaker’s new book, Hold What Makes You Whole, a pocket-sized full-color collection of new and selected works from an award-winning opera librettist, musician, and graphic designer. Amaker will be joined by Jammie Huynh, CONCEPT RXCH, and the Goose Creek High School poets: Emerson Finch Muck, Alyssa Ruth-Cole, and I.R. Kingsley.
Hold What Makes You Whole is a 200-page compilation of jazz, Blackness, self care, fatherhood, Star Wars, social justice, music, and memory. Along with the audiobook and e-book, the Hold project also features short films, two full-length albums, and an interactive website. Lisa Willis, executive director of the Cave Canem Foundation, has called this “a gratifying meditative collection of poems accompanied by kaleidoscopic visual imagery that pulls you in, settles your mind, and makes way for one’s own reflections. A journey of words through the micro and macro elements of a life. Amaker has created a collection made perfectly for this moment in time.” Tickets can be purchased here.
Marcus Amaker is a poet, recording artist, and mentor. He is the author of nine books of poetry, most recently Hold What Makes You Whole (Free Verse Press, 2023) and The Birth of All Things (Free Verse Press, 2020). The first poet laureate of Charleston, South Carolina, Amaker’s poetry has been interpreted for ballet, jazz, modern dance, opera, and theater, and has been recognized by the Kennedy Center, The Washington National Opera, The Portland Opera, Button Poetry, NPR, and others. He is the winner of a South Carolina Governor’s Award, and is the award-winning graphic designer of the national music journal No Depression. He is a 2019 artist-in-residence of the Gaillard Center and the creator of the Free Verse: Charleston Poetry Festival. In 2021, he received an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship. He lives in Charleston.