The spanking new August Wilson Center is bringing a lot to Downtown including a comfortable space for literary readings. Three poets, shown above from left, Terrance Hayes, Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon and Afaa Michael Weaver, all members of Cave Canem, the national forum for African-American poets, filled the second-floor space overlooking Liberty Avenue Oct. 14 with a lively display of styles and voices before a crowd of nearly 100.
First up was the new standard-bearer for the University of Pittsburgh Press, Van Clief-Stefanon, whose Pitt Poetry Series title, "Open Interval," was nominated for a National Book Award in poetry. She called her new book "a meditation on identity, freedom and space."
Her selections from that book were spare and lean like the poet, who teaches at Cornell University as well as the notorious Auburn State Prison in her Upstate New York neighborhood. Auburn is famed as the first jail with the electric chair, and is still a forboding place:
"At the prison at Auburn I corss the yard. Inmates whet tongues against my body: cement--sculpted--; poised for hate" is her description from the opening poem of the collection, "Bop: The North Star."
Pittsburgh audiences know Hayes, the Carnegie Mellon creative writing professor and author of several well-received poetry collections. He read from two of them "Wind in the Box" and "Lighthead."
The final reader was Weaver, a Baltimore poet and playwright who worked with the late Rob Penny, the Pittsburgh playwright, and is one of the "Elders" of Cave Canem. Co-founder Toi Derricotte, poet and Pitt professor, introduced the reading.
Posted
Oct 15 2009, 08:55 AM
by
Bob Hoover