An evening of powerful poetry performed by jessica Care moore and Brad Walrond will kick off EMU’s Writers Read Author series this month.

Verses & Vibes, an event featuring the pair of poets, authors and recording artists, will begin at 7 p.m. on Monday, Sept. 23, at the Common Grounds space in EMU’s University Commons. The event is free to attend and open to the public.

Following their poetry performances, moore and Walrond will lead a Q&A session and participate in a book signing (copies of their books will be available to purchase).

(who stylizes her first and last names in lowercase) is an internationally renowned poet, playwright, performance artist and producer. She is the founder of book publishing company , founder and producer of , and founder of The Moore Art House, a nonprofit dedicated to improving literacy in Detroit.

In April she was the poet laureate of Detroit. She is the third poet laureate to serve the city since 1981.

moore has performed on stages all over the world, including the Apollo Theater, Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and the London Institute for Contemporary Arts. She, along with Walrond, will perform at the Furious Flower Poetry Center at James Madison University this month.

She is the author of The Words Don’t Fit in My Mouth, The Alphabet Verses the Ghetto, and Sunlight Through Bullet Holes. The poems in her latest collection, We Want Our Bodies Back, speak to “Black women’s creative and intellectual power, and express the pain, sadness, and anger of those who suffer constant scrutiny because of their gender and race” (, 2020).

moore is a two-time Knight Arts recipient, 2018 Joyce Award winner, 2016 Kresge Artist Fellow, 2013 Alain Locke Award recipient, and the 2015 NAACP Great Expectations Award recipient.

is a poet, author, conceptual/performance artist, and one of the foremost writers and performers of the 1990s Black Arts Movement centered in New York City. His poems have been published in The Atlantic, African Voices Magazine, Moko Magazine, ArtsEverywhere, Eleven Eleven, and Wordpeace. His latest collection of poems, Every Where Alien, “traces blackness, queerness, and desire through the legacy of 1990s and early 2000s New York City underground art movements, illuminating how their roots and undertold histories inspire today’s culture” (, 2024).

Copies of moore’s and Walrond’s are available to check out at EMU’s Sadie Hartzler Library.

The Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion partnered with Writers Read, the Office of Student Life, and the Center for Interfaith Engagement to bring this event to life. 

Dawn Neil, coordinator for the Office of DEI, said she had seen moore perform her poetry at the White Privilege Conference in Tulsa this past April.

“Listening to her, the raw power and emotion in her voice gave me chills,” Neil said. “Bringing her here feels essential. Her message needs to be heard, and I believe it’s one that our students will deeply connect with.”

Where: Lehman Auditorium
When: 7 p.m., Friday
Cost: Free, with suggested donation of $10 to $20
Online:

˛ÝÝ®ÉçÇř’s 2023 Music Gala Concert, says David Berry, is a labor of love for so many people.

The upcoming concert will showcase three talented guest artists and every music ensemble on campus collaborating in a special evening of dance, poetry, jazz and world music. Two compositions written for the event will premiere. And the university choir and chamber orchestra will pair up to perform Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy,” featuring soloists Olivia Rominiyi, Sarah Hamilton, Jordan Davidson, and Shannon Kiser.

“We’re celebrating the connectedness of community and humanity across the globe and what we can do when we come together,” said Berry, music program director at EMU. 

The concert, fittingly titled Together, begins at 7 p.m. on Friday in Lehman Auditorium. It is free to attend, with to help support EMU Music.

The World Has Changed

Embodying the theme of collaboration, an actress, dancer, orchestra and choir will join together to perform The World Has Changed. The interdisciplinary piece, based on the poetry of Alice Walker, will see its world premiere at the gala. 

composed the score for The World Has Changed. Wadsworth, an assistant professor of music at Williams College, also wrote music for this year’s Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival. His compositions have been performed at The Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center and at Westminster Abbey for Queen Elizabeth II.

The World Has Changed will feature a narration of Walker’s poetry from actress of the American Shakespeare Center in Staunton. “We needed a voice that would communicate the text well with the orchestra, with the choir and with the dance, so we knew we needed someone special for that,” Berry said. He credited EMU Provost Tynisha Willingham, a board member of the theater company, with connecting Bellamore with the production.

Paula Facci, an assistant professor at the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, will perform a dance that her class, Creative Approaches to Peacebuilding, helped to choreograph.

Berry described the music of The World Has Changed as “ethereal, powerful and soulful” and said the composition serves as “a celebration of what could be.”

Amahoro Suite

The other original piece premiering at the concert will be the world jazz fusion composition Amahoro Suite by , a man of many talents and cultures.

The Liberian-German composer, musician, singer, storyteller and pastor plays jazz flute, piano and percussion. He’s performed in Vatican City for Pope John Paul II and at Madison Square Garden. He is the director of , a Christian ministry affiliated with Mosaic Mennonite Conference.

“He’s really just an amazing artist and person,” Berry said. 

Makinto and his wife, Mukarabe, will recite poetry as part of Amahoro Suite. Amahoro is the Kirundi — the official language of Burundi — expression for “peace.” Amahoro Suite will include musical performances from Makinto and the EMU Jazz Band. 

“It’ll involve all kinds of things from Duke Ellington to djembe ensemble to African jazz flute,” Berry said.

‘Ode to Joy’

Those attending the concert will be treated to a choir and orchestra recital of “Ode to Joy” from Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9. The ode, with its lyrics by poet Friedrich Schiller, has been sung at important movements throughout history to inspire and instill courage and hope, Berry said. 

“It’s been a symbol, since it’s creation, of our shared humanity, our connectedness as a human race,” he said. 

In the days leading up to the concert, about 1,500 students from Harrisonburg and Rockingham County will watch Makinto perform music and share stories as part of a unique collaboration with . EMU Music is a premier artist partner with The Kennedy Center-sponsored arts education nonprofit. 

Other collaborative partners for this event include the American Shakespeare Center, the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, EMU’s Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival and sponsor Everence Federal Credit Union.

For those who cannot attend in person, a livestream will be available to watch online through the .

Nathalie Handal, an award-winning poet, playwright and author, will read from her works.

Ms. Handal teaches and lectures nationally and internationally, most recently in Africa and at Columbia University in New York City. She is the author of the poetry collections, The NeverField and The Lives of Rain and the poetry CDs, Traveling Rooms and Spell. She is editor of The Poetry of Arab Women: A  Contemporary Anthology, an Academy of American Poets Bestseller and winner of the Pen Oakland/Josephine Miles Award, and co-editor along with Tina Chang and Ravi Shankar of Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia & Beyond (W.W. Norton, 2008).

Her forthcoming poetry book, Love and Strange Horses, will be published by the University of Pittsburgh Press.

Admission to the program, which includes dinner, is $15. Registration is required and should be made by noon Friday, Feb. 11. Registrations can be made on line at http://emu.edu/langlit/writers-read/reservations or by calling 540-432-4168.

Sklarew is professor emerita of literature at American University in Washington, D.C., and former president of Yaddo, an artists’ retreat in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.

She is the author of three chapbooks and six collections of poetry, including “Lithuania: New & Selected Poems” and “The Witness Trees”; a collection of short fictions, “Like a Field Riddled by Ants”; a collection of essays, “Over the Rooftops of Time”; a nonfiction work, “Holocaust and the Construction of Memory”; and her most recent publication, “1,111 Days in my Life Plus Four.”

The Contemporary Poets’ Archives of the Library of Congress has recorded her poetry, and her poem, “Lithuania,” won the Anna Davidson Rosenberg Award from the Judah Magnus Museum, cited as “a living testimonial to those who perished in the Kovno Ghetto, wholly heartfelt and viscerally honest.”

Jerry Holsopple, professor of visual and communication arts at EMU, is teaching and pursuing special projects at LCC International University in Klaipeda, Lithuania, as a Fulbright scholar for the 2009-10 academic year.

Dr. Holsopple wrote: “If I wasn’t in the middle of the dark Lithuanian winter I would be there [EMU] to hear Myra read her work. I have used her poetry during all the Lithuania cross-cultural experiences that I have led to envelop students in the emotion and experience of Paneriai (one of the early Holocaust sites). Reading her poetry has affected me and the students deeply. As I pick up a copy of her writing and read a few lines, I am moved again.”

Maggie Anderson, poet and director of the Wick Poetry Program at Kent State University in Ohio, will read from her work, including “After the Bell: Contemporary Prose about School,” 5:30 p.m. that day in Martin Chapel of the seminary building at EMU. She will end with a question and answer period.

The Wick Poetry Center at Kent State promotes opportunities for emerging and established poets locally, regionally and nationally, provides scholarships to the university for high school and undergraduate student poets, offers outreach programs to area schools and supports publication of chapbooks by Ohio writers.

Robert Wick, a sculptor and former art department faculty member at Kent State, and his brother, Walter Wick, established the center in 1984 in memory of their sons Stan and Tom Wick.

Author of Four Books

Anderson has written four books of poetry, her most recent, “Windfall: New and Selected Poems,” published in 2000. Her other works include “Cold Comfort” (1986) and “A Space Filled with Moving” (1992).

She is editor of the new and selected poems of Louise McNeill and co-editor of “After the Bell: Contemporary Prose about School,” “Learning by Heart: Contemporary American Poetry about School” and “A Gathering of Poets,” an anthology of poems read to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the student shootings during an anti-war protest at Kent State University in 1970.

Recent poems have been published in The Alaska Quarterly, The Georgia Review and The American Poetry Review.

Admission, which includes dinner, is $15 and $7 for students. Reservations are required and should be made by Friday, Oct. 17 by calling 540-432-4168 or email: langlit@emu.edu.