New Hampshire Public Radio Introduces Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire's Timely Poetry Series

At NHPR, Peter Biello speaks with JerriAnne Boggis, executive director of the Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire, about the organization's free virtual series highlighting black poets, "The Black Matter Is Life: Poetry for Engagement and Overcoming."  A recent event featured guest poet Patricia Smith in discussion about poems by James Weldon Johnson, Audre Lorde, Danez Smith, and Elizabeth Alexander. The next event in the series is on January 21, featuring guest poet Jericho Brown. In conversation with Biello, Boggis notes that "it's really just poems that we thought either spoke to a cultural representation of African Americans, meaning of the times, the way language was written, the beauty of the poem, the history, and then brought it together in that way." Picking up from there: 

Are there any poems from one of these authors or any other in the series that resonates with you? 

I really love "Litany for Survival." That spoke to me for this upcoming series. For the next series, "Love, Love, Love," the piece by Jericho Brown, "Like Father" is just a beautiful piece.

What about "Litany for Survival" that makes it resonate so strongly with you?

The history of resilience, of courage, of really just coming back no matter what our history tells us, no matter how invisible we are in a community or culture, the constantness of trying to survive when everything tells you you shouldn't survive. It just speaks to that human spirit, that African American hero spirit, I think, of surviving from slavery, Jim Crow, all that history we can think about and still hear creating a culture, being such a prominent part of what we call American culture. 

Learn more at New Hampshire Public Radio.