I wanted to take a moment to share an interview between poets and professors, Randall Horton and Tyehimba Jess. Horton and Jess discuss persona poems, language, titling complete works, McKoy (The Two-Headed Nightingale) Sisters, freak show, and researching as a writer.
Arts@UNH Interview with Tyehimba Jess
Randall Horton
Randall Horton is an associate professor of English at the University of
New Haven in Connecticut and the author of The Definition of Place (2006) and
The Lingua Franca of Ninth Street (2009). He is the recipient of the Gwendolyn
Brooks Poetry Award, the Bea González Poetry Award, and a National Endowment of
the Arts Literature Fellowship. Randall is a fellow of Cave Canem and a member
of the Affrilachian Poets, two organizations that support African American
poetry; and a member of the Symphony: The House That Etheridge Built, a reading
collective named for the poet Etheridge Knight. An excerpt from Horton’s
memoir, Roxbury, is newly released as a chapbook.
Tyehimba Jess bridges slam and
academic poetry. His first collection, leadbelly (2005), an exploration
of the blues musician Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter’s life, was chosen for the
National Poetry Series and was voted one of the top three poetry
books of the year by Black Issues Book Review. A reviewer for Publishers
Weekly noted that “the collection’s strength lies in its contradictory
forms; from biography to lyric to hard-driving prose poem, boast to song, all
are soaked in the rhythm and dialect of Southern blues and the demands of
honoring one’s talent.”
TedxNashvlle - Tyehimba Jess - Syncopated Sonnets
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmtH0A5mVnA
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