Grace Cavalieri Interviews Slam Poet Star, Mecca Verdell
The Maryland Poet Laureate talks youth, fearlessness, and colorism with slam poet, Mecca Verdell
In this new episode of Grace Cavalieri's The Poet and the Poem, the Poet Laureate sits down with 23 year-old Baltimore slam poet, Mecca Verdell, who just recently published her first collection of poems.
Grace and Mecca talk colorism, youth, and fearlessness in this 30-minute long interview which includes a handful of poems which Mecca delivers in a slam performance style. Grace, awed by Mecca's delivery and poetic voice, pronounces that, after 60 years of reading poetry, she is still learning.
Listen to the entire interview here.
Make sure you pick up Grace's book, Other Voices, Other Lives which traces here own journey in poetry and includes several interviews with poets like Rita Dove.
Keeping up with Reuben Jackson: Bon Appetit, COMP, Friday Night Jazz and more!
Reuben Jackson has been busy as of late, publishing in a well-known journal, contributing to a piece in Bon Appetit, hosting a WPFW show and more!
“Persuasive” Woman Drinking Absinthe explores “Illicit Love” in New Review from Compulsive Reader
In his new review of Katherine E. Young’s Woman Drinking Absinthe, Charles Rammelkamp delivers a review worthy of the subject. With careful erudition, and no lack of wit, he mines Katherine’s beautiful and heartbreaking poesy about “illicit love” for words of affirmation.
7 Upbeat Poems to Celebrate Poem in Your Pocket Day (with printable PDFs)
Poem in Your Pocket Day was created by the Office of the Mayor of New York City in 2002 in partnership with the New York Department of Cultural Affairs and Education. Its goal is to reintroduce poetry, a traditionally performative art, into social situations and normal everyday life. As such, PIYPD marks the end of National Poetry Month, bringing the lessons of the month out into the rest of the year.