Institute of African American Affairs

presents

PHOTO © DANNY DA COSTA

Linton Kwesi JohnsonArtist-in-Residence | Fall 2014

Institute of African American Affairs New York University

Linton Kwesi JohnsonFall 2014 Artist-in-Residence

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THE ARTISTLinton Kwesi Johnson is a Jamaican-born British national whose work focuses on African Caribbean cultural expressions in poetry and reggae music, from both sides of the Atlantic during a career spanning over four decades. The program of events for Johnson’s brief tenure at NYU–IAAA will include examining these fields of artistic creativity. Johnson will also take the opportunity to draw on the expertise of some eminent friends in the academy with the aim of engaging students and members of the public in the discussions. Johnson was born in Chapleton, in the parish of Clarendon, Jamaica. After moving to London at an early age and later attending the University of London’s Goldsmiths College, he began writing politically charged poetry. Johnson’s dub poetry, with its culturally specific Jamaican patois dialect and reggae backbeat, was a precursor to the spoken word and rap music movements.

His earlier books of poetry, 1974’s Voices of the Living and the Dead, 1975’s Dread, Beat An’ Blood and 1980’s Inglan Is A Bitch, gained wide recognition, especially among the politically and socially conscious. In 2002, Johnson became the first black poet and the second living poet to be published in the prestigious Penguin Modern Classics series.

He also released several albums of his work, including Dread Beat An’ Blood and Forces of Victory, both released in the late 1970s; and Bass Culture and Making History, in 1980 and 1984, respectively. Some of Johnson’s distinguished awards include an Honorary Visiting Professorship at Middlesex University in London (2004), and a silver Musgrave medal from the Institute of Jamaica for distinguished eminence in the field of poetry (2005). His work has been translated into several languages and he has toured extensively throughout Europe, Japan, South Africa, Brazil and other nations. For Johnson’s extensive list of publications and records please visit www.lintonkwesijohnson.com.

(Source: “Linton Kwesi Johnson.” Bio. A&E Television Networks, 2014. Web.)

THE PROGR AMS

FRIDAY, SEPT 19, 2014 / 7:30 PMLinton Kwesi Johnson main lecture: “African Consciousness in Reggae Music”Growing up in London, reggae music provided Johnson with not only a sense of identity but also a career as a successful recording artist and performer.

Kimmel Center – NYU • Rosenthal Pavilion • 10th Floor60 Washington Square South • New York, NY

TUESDAY, SEPT 23, 2014 / 7:00 PMAn Evening of Poetry with Linton Kwesi Johnsonfollowed by discussion chaired by British Caribbean novelist and essayist, Caryl Phillips, Professor of English at Yale University.

Kimmel Center – NYU • E&L Auditorium • 4th Floor60 Washington Square South • New York, NY

FRIDAY, SEPT 26, 2014 / 6:00 PMMervyn Morris on Louise BennettMervyn Morris, Jamaica’s poet laureate, talk on Louise Bennett, the mother of Jamaican language poetry, followed by discussion chaired by Linton Kwesi Johnson.

NYU Law School • D’Agostino Hall • Room: Lipton Hall108 West Third Street • New York, NY

FRIDAY, OCT 10, 2014 / 6:00 PMAn Evening of Caribbean Poetrywith Kwame Dawes (Jamaica/Ghana), Lauren Alleyne (Trinidad), Olive Senior (Jamaica) and Vladimir Lucien (St. Lucia) reading from their works — chaired by Kwame Dawes.

NYU Law School • D’Agostino Hall • Room: Lipton Hall108 West Third Street • New York, NY

All programs introduced by Dr. Ifeona Fulani,

Global Liberal Studies Program, New York University

Lauren K. Alleyne is the author of Difficult Fruit (Peepal Tree Press, 2014). She holds a Master of Fine Arts degree, and a graduate certificate in Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies from Cornell University, and an MA in English and Creative Writing from Iowa State University. Alleyne’s fiction, non-fiction, interviews and poetry have been widely published in journals and anthologies such as Women’s Studies Quarterly, Guernica, The Caribbean Writer, Black Arts Quarterly, The Cimarron Review, Crab Orchard Review, Gathering Ground, and Growing Up Girl, among others. Alleyne is a Cave Canem graduate, and is originally from Trinidad and Tobago. She is currently the Poet-in-Residence, and an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Dubuque in Dubuque, IA.

Kwame Dawes is the author of sixteen collections of poetry, including, most recently, Duppy Conqueror, Wheels, Back of Mount Peace, and Hope’s Hospice. Born in Ghana, Dawes spent most of his childhood and early adult life in Jamaica. He has also published two novels, Bivouac and She’s Gone, winner of the 2008 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Best First Novel. An accomplished actor, playwright, and producer, fifteen of his plays have been produced, and he has acted in, directed, or produced several of these productions himself, most recently One Love at the Lyric Hammersmith in London. His essays have appeared in numerous journals including Bomb Magazine, The London Review of Books, Granta, Essence, World Literature Today, and Double Take Magazine. Until July 2011, Dawes was Distinguished Poet in Residence, Louis Frye Scudder Professor of Liberal Arts, and founder and executive director of the South Carolina Poetry Initiative.

Ifeona Fulani teaches in the Global Liberal Studies Program at New York University. Her recent publications include Archipelagos of Sound: Transnational Caribbeanities, Women and Music (University of West Indies Press, 2012), an edited volume of essays, and a collection of short stories titled Ten Days in Jamaica, (Peepal Tree Press, 2012). She is also the author of a novel, Seasons of Dust (1997), and has published short stories in the Beacon’s Best anthology series, in Small Axe, and in Black Renaissance/Renaissance Noir. Her scholarly articles have been published in journals such as Small Axe, Anthurium and Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing and a PhD in Comparative Literature, both from New York University.

Vladimir Lucien is a writer from St. Lucia. His work has been published in several journals such as the Caribbean Review of Books, Wasafiri, The PN Review, BIM Magazine, Caribbean Beat and other journals, as well as an anthology Beyond Sangre Grande, edited by Cyril Dabydeen. He is also the screenwriter of the documentary The Merikins which premiered at the Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival in 2012.

Mervyn Morris was born in Kingston, Jamaica and studied at the University College of the West Indies and as a Rhodes Scholar, at St. Edmund Hall, Oxford. He was on the staff of the University of the West Indies, Mona, from 1966 until 2002, retiring as Professor Emeritus of Creative Writing and West Indian Literature. He is the author of Is English We Speaking and Other Essays (1999), Making West Indian Literature (2005) and Miss Lou: Louise Bennett and Jamaican Culture (Ian Randle Publishers, Kingston, 2014). His books of poetry include The Pond, Shadowboxing, Examination Centre (New Beacon Books, London), On Holy Week (Dangaroo Press, Sydney), and I been there, sort of: New and Selected Poems (Carcanet Press, Manchester, 2006). He has recently been appointed Jamaica’s Poet Laureate.

Caryl Phillips was born in St.Kitts, West Indies, and brought up in England. He is the author of numerous books of non-fiction and fiction. Dancing in the Dark won the 2006 PEN/Beyond Margins Award, and A Distant Shore won the 2004 Commonwealth Writers Prize. His other awards include the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Crossing the River, which was also short-listed for the Booker Prize. He has written extensively for the stage, television, and film, and is a regular contributor to newspapers and magazines on both sides of the Atlantic. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and holds honorary doctorates from a number of universities. He has taught at universities in Singapore, Ghana, Sweden and Barbados and is currently Professor of English at Yale University.

Olive Senior was born and brought up in Jamaica and educated in Jamaica and Canada. Her prizewinning collection of stories includes Summer Lightning, which won the Commonwealth Writers Prize. Her novel, Dancing Lessons, was published in Canada in 2011 and an illustrated children’s book, Birthday Suit in 2012. Her poetry books are Shell, (shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Award), Over the Roofs of the World (shortlisted for Canada’s Governor-General’s Literary Award and Cuba’s Casa de las Americas Prize), Gardening in the Tropics (winner of the F.J. Bressani Literary Prize), and Talking of Trees. Olive Senior’s non-fiction works on Caribbean culture include the A-Z of Jamaican Heritage and several others. She is the recipient of numerous awards and prizes, and has worked internationally as a creative writing teacher and lecturer on Caribbean literature and culture. Currently she is on the faculty of the Humber School for Writers, Toronto. The book Olive Senior by Denise deCaires Narain has recently been published by Northcote House Publishers in the UK.

PHOTO: RACHEL ELIZA GRIFFITHS

PHOTO: GREG SALVATORI

Institute of African American Affairs14A Washington Mews, 4th FloorNew York, NY 10003

The Institute of African American Affairs (IAAA) at New York University was founded in 1969 to research, document, and celebrate the cultural and intellectual production of Africa and its diaspora in the Atlantic world and beyond. IAAA is committed to the study of Blacks in modernity through concentrations in Pan-Africanism and Black Urban Studies.

The NYU-IAAA Linton Kwesi Johnson Artist-in-Residence programs are free and open to the public. Space is limited. For updates and information, please visit nyuiaaa.org.

…the newest and most original poetic form to have emerged in the English language in the last quarter century.”— Fred D’Aguiar, poet and novelist

…his poetry is meant to recoup lost structures, identities, pure ‘rhythm and roots,’ poetry integrating audience and performer in one collective voice.”— Cyril Dabydeen, World Literature Today

The name Linton Kwesi Johnson conjures up images of leadership, strong views and direction. He is the acknowledged head of the new wave of performance poets, whose words welded politics and social conscience with a potent challenge to those in power.” — Sharon Atkin, The Caribbean Times