{"id":99,"date":"2017-02-09T01:25:30","date_gmt":"2017-02-09T01:25:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ctlsites.uga.edu\/poeticskewels3050\/?p=99"},"modified":"2017-02-09T01:25:30","modified_gmt":"2017-02-09T01:25:30","slug":"the-dark-room-collective","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ctlsites.uga.edu\/poeticskewels3050\/the-dark-room-collective\/","title":{"rendered":"The Dark Room Collective"},"content":{"rendered":"

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-founded in Boston in 1988 by a group of African American poets led by Thomas Sayers Ellis and Sharan Strange.\u00a0According to the New York Times article ‘Where Black Poetry Took Wing’, in 1987 the two young poets attended the funeral of James Baldwin.\u00a0They were deeply moved by the funeral ceremony, but also\u00a0distressed that they had never met an African-American literary lion like Mr. Baldwin.\u00a0Ellis and Strange then came up with the\u00a0plan to\u00a0bring young black writers and artists together to read their work aloud, bond with mentors and to foster the sort of relationships\u00a0that had nurtured many a cultural movement.
\n-the mission of the Collective was to form a community of established and emerging African American writers
\n-Strange and Ellis began the Dark Room Collective at their house at 31 Inman Street in Cambridge, where they hosted the reading series on Sunday afternoons. A\u00a0crowd showed up, some furniture got moved, some chairs unfolded and their living room turned into a salon.
\n-it soon expanded to include musical performances, art shows, and workshops and became known as a much needed home for writers of color in the mostly white-dominated literary community<\/p>\n

-people of varying ethnicities, ages, classes, and communities attended the series, which later relocated to the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston when it outgrew the living room in Cambridge<\/p>\n

-scholars say the Dark Room Collective is\u00a0less about strife or racial identity but it’s more\u00a0about the imagination taking over and leading the poets to borrow from, and burrow into, history, pop culture, even quantum physics in new and surprising ways although some do use their work to\u00a0to fight against various forms\u00a0of oppression<\/p>\n

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-the Dark Room Collective stopped\u00a0after a decade or so, however, some of its members now in their 40s, have gone on to become famous literary figures, winning major prizes. One example is Natasha Trethewey, who won the Pulitzer Prize for her book in 2006, \u201cNative Guard,\u201d and is the nation\u2019s poet laureate<\/p>\n

-other famous poets from dark room collective:\u00a0\u00a0Tracy K. Smith won the Pulitzer for \u201cLife on Mars\u201d in 2012, writers Kevin Young, Carl Phillips and Major Jackson have all been recognized as prolific and influential voices in American poetry.<\/p>\n

-in the New York Times article by Jeff Gordinier he has a quote by\u00a0Mr. Adrian Matejka, who is a part of a poetic organization that has come out of the Dark Room Collective. He described Dark Room Collective\u00a0as a \u201cshift out of the \u2018I\u2019m a black man in America and it\u2019s hard\u2019 mode\u201d into \u201cthe idea of \u2018you are who you are, so that\u2019s always going to be part of the poem,\u2019\u00a0\u201d with \u201ca lot more room for the sublime experience of language.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Poems by Tracy K. Smith:\u00a0https:\/\/www.poetryfoundation.org\/poems-and-poets\/poems\/detail\/55520<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.poetryfoundation.org\/poems-and-poets\/poems\/detail\/56376<\/a><\/p>\n

Poems by\u00a0Kevin Young:\u00a0https:\/\/www.poetryfoundation.org\/poems-and-poets\/poems\/detail\/58069<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.poetryfoundation.org\/poems-and-poets\/poems\/detail\/49763<\/a>
\n\u201cA Brief Guide to the Dark Room Collective.\u201d Poets.org, Academy of American Poets, 9 May 2004, www.poets.org\/poetsorg\/text\/brief-guide-dark-room-collective.<\/p>\n

Gordinier, Jeff. \u201cThe Dark Room Collective: Where Black Poetry Took Wing.\u201d New York Times, 27 May 2014, www.nytimes.com\/2014\/05\/27\/arts\/the-dark-room-collective-where-black-poetry-took-wing.html?_r=0.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Dark Room Collective, Then and Now.\u201d Poets and Writers, www.pw.org\/content\/the_dark_room_collective_then_and_now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

-founded in Boston in 1988 by a group of African American poets led by Thomas Sayers Ellis and Sharan Strange.\u00a0According to the New York Times article ‘Where Black Poetry Took Wing’, in 1987 the two young poets attended the funeral of James Baldwin.\u00a0They were deeply moved by the funeral ceremony, but also\u00a0distressed that they had … Continue reading The Dark Room Collective<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2469,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-99","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ctlsites.uga.edu\/poeticskewels3050\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ctlsites.uga.edu\/poeticskewels3050\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ctlsites.uga.edu\/poeticskewels3050\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ctlsites.uga.edu\/poeticskewels3050\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2469"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ctlsites.uga.edu\/poeticskewels3050\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ctlsites.uga.edu\/poeticskewels3050\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ctlsites.uga.edu\/poeticskewels3050\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ctlsites.uga.edu\/poeticskewels3050\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ctlsites.uga.edu\/poeticskewels3050\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}