The Life and Poetry of Carolyn Marie Rodgers, with Nina Rodgers Gordon, Andrew Peart, and Srikanth Reddy

Delve into the life and poetry of one of the chief architects of the Black Arts Movement in Chicago, Carolyn Marie Rodgers (1940-2010), with a very special guest: Carolyn’s sister, Nina Rodgers Gordon.

Born in Bronzeville, Carolyn Marie Rodgers cofounded Third World Press, which remains the largest independent Black-owned press in the United States. Rodgers’s poetry is widely anthologized, and in 1976, her book, How I Got Ovah: New and Selected Poems, was a finalist for the National Book Award. Today, we have the great honor of hearing her poetry read by her sister, Nina Rodgers Gordon, who talks about what it was like growing up with Carolyn and the many phases of her writing and life. She’s joined in the studio by Andrew Peart, a Chicago-based writer and editor who has worked with Nina for several years to organize the papers of Carolyn Marie Rodgers, and Srikanth “Chicu” Reddy, former guest editor of Poetry and editor of the Phoenix Poets book series at the University of Chicago Press. You’ll also hear a clip of Rodgers reading her poems in the late sixties and speaking at Northwestern University in 2007 for a symposium called “The Black Arts Movement in the Broader Legacy of the Civil Rights Movement.” You can read more on Rodgers, and more of Rodgers’s work, in the October 2022 issue of Poetry.