2ND ANNUAL MLK SPOKENWORD COMPETITION

Come showcase your talent at our MLK SPOKENWORD COMPETITION!

$100 CASH PRIZE GOR BEST POET.

2 Rounds. One Winner. $7 Entry Fee!

Join us at the Dock Book Shop located at 6637 Meadowbrook Dr. Bring your best rhymes and powerful words to honor the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. This in-person event promises to be a night filled with creativity, inspiration, and community. Don't miss this opportunity to share your voice and connect with others through the power of spoken word. See you there!

Hey DFW, we invite your talented sons and daughters to Mansfield’s first ever Spokenword Shark Tank at The Farr Best Theater 109 N. Main Street in Downtown Mansfield on Thursday, Dec 12th 2024, from 7:30pm-9:15pm.

Only $5

This event is where artist answer questions about their craft and then perform for judges. Winners get a paid feature, business cards, and we design a retractable banner and brochure. We invite all Singers, Poets, Musicians, Clean Comedians. Contact Mike Guinn 972-704-5001

Inner Moonlight is the monthly poetry series for the Wild Detectives!

Our show is the second Wednesday of every month. Meet us in the backyard at 7:30pm on Wednesday December 11th for a live reading from one featured writer, with a brief open mic to follow. This month, we are proud to present poet Andie Carver! Andie Salm Carver (they/she) is a queer writer and activist. They received their MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Antioch University, and their chapbook poetry collection, TRAILER TRASH, was originally published through Bottlecap Press. Andie lives in the Dallas Metroplex with their little cat, Young Bernie Sanders. You can read more of their work at ModusOperandiee.com.

“Follow your inner moonlight, don’t hide the madness.” —Allen Ginsberg, from On Being a Writer

April Gibson who is a writer poet and professor, will read briefly from her book and discuss her life's challenges and accomplishments with the participants, allowing some time for questions. Testimony, resiliency, and transformation will be central themes of the poetry activity to be led by Gibson after the reading.

Miss Gwendolyn Brooks offered a voice for Black women in literature in the early 1950’s at a time when Black women characters were relegated to maids and nannies. Annie Allen, her second book of poetry, is the groundbreaking work which made her the first Black person to win the Pulitzer Prize in any category. These poems introduce you to Annie Allen and her community as she grows from childhood to womanhood and is faced with poverty, despair, racial discrimination, war and, somehow, hope. October 2024 marks the 75th anniversary of Annie Allen. Lansana will share stories and anecdotes from ten years with Miss Brooks as her last protégé.

Quraysh Ali Lansana is author of over twenty books in poetry, nonfiction and children’s literature. Lansana is currently a Tulsa Artist Fellow and a Visiting Associate Professor of English/Creative Writing at the University of Tulsa. He was formerly a Lecturer in Africana Studies at Oklahoma State University-Tulsa where he also served as Director of the Center for Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation. Lansana is Executive Producer of KOSU/NPR’s Focus: Black Oklahoma monthly radio program, which is a recipient of a 2022 duPont-Columbia Award, a 2022 NAACP Image Award, a 2022 Oklahoma Society of Professional Journalists Award and was a Peabody Award nominee. Lansana is also the recipient of a 2022 Emmy Award, a 2022 Oklahoma Association of Broadcasters Award and a 2022 National Educational Telecommunications Association Public Media Award for his roles as host and consultant for the OETA (PBS) documentary film “Tulsa Race Massacre: 100 Years Later.” Lansana is a three-time International Regional Magazine Award-winning Contributing Editor for Oklahoma Today magazine.

A former faculty member of both the Writing Program of the School of
the Art Institute of Chicago
and the Drama Division of
The Juilliard School, Lansana served as Director of the Gwendolyn Brooks Center
for Black Literature and
Creative Writing at Chicago State University from 2002-2012 and was Associate Professor of English/Creative Writing there until 2014. His most recent books include Killing the Negative: A Conversation in Art & Verse (with Joel Daniel Phillips), Opal’s Greenwood Oasis, the skin of dreams: new and collected poems, 1995-2018, The Whiskey of Our Discontent: Gwendolyn Brooks as Conscience & Change Agent) and The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip Hop. Forthcoming titles include a children’s biography of Ralph Ellison, a memoir on the last decade of his mentor, Miss Gwendolyn Brooks, and a series of books on the Black Rodeo.

Lansana’s work appears in Best American Poetry 2019. He is a founding member of Tri-City Collective and serves on the Board of Directors of the Philbrook Museum of Art, Oklahoma Humanities and the Tulsa Press Club. Lansana is a Curatorial Scholar for The Thomas Gilcrease Institute of American History and Art and a Curatorial Board Co-Chair for the Ragdale Foundation. He is a Cave Canem Fellow and a member of the first cohort of the Culture of Health Leadership for Racial Healing Fellowship.

Poet and musician Lisa Huffaker leads participants in poetic responses to nature. The program is presented as part of a series of free community reading and discussion events during the NEA Big Read at Irving Public Library.

This year's selected title is "The Bear" by Andrew Krivak, with the theme "Where We Live." Free copies of the book will be available while supplies last. This program series is made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). Irving’s program partners include Friends of the Irving Public Library.

For updates and additional sponsorship information, check the library’s web calendar and social media, @irvinglibrary on Instagram, X and Facebook. NEA Big Read is a program of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest. This event is hosted in partnership with The Writer's Garret with Lisa Huffaker.

A poem is a gesture toward home.
-Jericho Brown

As Brown suggests in his poem “Duplex,” the act of writing poetry can allow us to reach towards a sense of self & belonging. In this course, we will consider the relationship between place and home. We’ll look towards the material world around us, the people in our lives, our communities, nature, and systems of obstruction & oppression as avenues through which to interpret the concept of “home.” We will discuss a selection of poems interpreting “home” in different ways, and the course will end with a generative writing exercise.

Check out the syllabus

Hannah Smith is originally from Dallas, where she now works for Southwest Review. She was a 2023 National Poetry Series Finalist and Jake Adam York Semifinalist, and her poems have been published in Best New Poets, Gulf Coast, Ninth Letter, Image, and elsewhere. She received an MFA from the Ohio State University, where she served as the Managing Editor for The Journal. Her collaborative chapbook, Metal House of Cards, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.