Tuesday, September 28, 2010

The Black Poetry Mixed Media Project


We recently received funding from the Illinois Humanities Council to produce "The Black Poetry Mixed Media Project," a series of exhibits featuring photographs from the Eugene B. Redmond (EBR) Collection along with poetry and biographical sketches of major writers, including Maya Angelou, Amiri Baraka, Lucille Clifton, and Margaret Walker.

Professor and humanities librarian Julia Hansen and I envisioned the grant as one way of making materials from the EBR Collection more widely accessible to citizens in the region. The exhibits include display panels with vibrant images of the poets reading their works and interacting with their audiences. Versions of our exhibit will contain audio of poets reading their works and Redmond providing commentary about the thousands and thousands of photographs that he has taken.

Over the course of the next few months, the exhibits will appear in East St. Louis, Edwardsville, and other locations in the area. In December, we will have a culminating exhibit at Lovejoy Library, the institutional home of the EBR Collection.

Related content: Eugene B. Redmond and the EBR Collection

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