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Blackbird Poetry Festival

The 2022 Blackbird Poetry Festival: "Poetry for Every Body"

SAVE THE DATE: Thursday, April 28th, 2022

The Blackbird Poetry Festival will return with a day of events dedicated to Poetry for Every Body featuring Molly McCully Brown. Please mark your calendars now for the events below and check back soon for updated details. If you have any questions in the meantime, please contact Tara Hart (thart@howardcc.edu) or Brian Martin (bmartin@howardcc.edu).

Festival Events

Poetry Police 10am-11:30am

To celebrate National Poem in Your Pocket Day on April 28th, we're seeking a few volunteers for the Poetry Police Force. Poetry Police will roam the halls and outdoor spaces distributing rewards and (poetry) citations to encourage reading and sharing of poetry. Poetry Police receive an official festival t-shirt. To volunteer for a shift or for more information, contact our Poetry Police Captain Rick Leith at rleith@howardcc.edu.

Morning Songs Workshop 11:00am-12:15pm in RCF 400

Featuring Molly McCully Brown (bio below)
Festival poet Molly McCully Brown will lead a workshop on The Uses of the Body: "In many ways, every story is about the body. No one lives apart from theirs, and so no writer, speaker or character exists fully removed from the simultaneously fragile and indispensable fact of a corporeal existence. Stories are lived in bodies and made in them; language itself is created in breathing and muscle, in gesture, contraction, release. But In this generative workshop we’ll take a look at the way several poets have explicitly conjured the physical reality(ies) of the body on the page, in health and illness, in youth and aging, in joy and in grief. Then, we’ll use these models as a jumping off point to write and share our own poems in, and of, the body." - Molly McCully Brown

Participants should come prepared to write. For more information, contact Tara Hart (thart@howardcc.edu) or Brian Martin (bmartin@howardcc.edu). Diversity Index 5126

Behind-The Scenes with The Little Patuxent Review 12:30-1:50 in DH 122

Join the editors from the Little Patuxent Review for a conversation and deep dive into the process of putting together a literary journal. The editors will share their perspectives on building a diverse and inclusive issue and will provide tips on how to submit your own work for publishing opportunities. There will be time for a Q&A session at the end.

Participants can come to Howard Community College Duncan Hall 122 and watch together or participate remotely via zoom. Computers are also available for individual log-in from DH 122.

Join Zoom Meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86869053565?pwd=cjQ1cWhxYWswOHdqTmdTaDRCZUVnZz09

Meeting ID: 868 6905 3565Passcode: 106184One tap mobile+16465588656,,86869053565#,,,,*106184# US (New York)+13126266799,,86869053565#,,,,*106184# US (Chicago)

Sunbird Reading 2:30pm-4:00pm in RCF 400

Molly McCully Brown (bio below) will be joined by students, faculty, staff, and community members for an afternoon of poetry. This event is free and open to the public. After the scheduled readings, there will be an opportunity to share your own poem during our 'open mic' session. For more information, contact Brian Martin (bmartin@howardcc.edu). Diversity Index 5127

Nightbird Reading

Nightbird is a ticketed event presented by our community partners, The Howard County Poetry and Literature Society (HoCoPoLitSo). For more information, call HoCoPoLitSo at (443) 518-4568 or email hocopolitso@yahoo.com.

To purchase tickets, please follow this link: https://bit.ly/nightbird2022

Festival Poet

Molly McCully Brown

MMB Molly McCully Brown is the author of the essay collection Places I’ve Taken my Body— which was published in the United States in June 2020 by Persea Books, and released in the United Kingdom in March of 2021 by Faber & Faber— and the poetry collection The Virginia State Colony For Epileptics and Feebleminded (Persea Books, 2017), which won the 2016 Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize and was named a New York Times Critics’ Top Book of 2017. With Susannah Nevison, she is also the coauthor of the poetry collection In The Field Between Us (Persea Books, 2020).

Brown has been the recipient of the Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Scholarship, a United States Artists Fellowship, a Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellowship and the Jeff Baskin Writers Fellowship from the Oxford American magazine. Her poems and essays have appeared in The Paris Review, Tin House, The Guardian, Virginia Quarterly Review, Vogue, The New York Times, Crazyhorse, The Yale Review and elsewhere.

Raised in rural Virginia, she is a graduate of Bard College at Simon’s Rock, Stanford University, and the University of Mississippi, where she received her MFA. She teaches at Old Dominion University, where she is an Assistant Professor of English and Creative Nonfiction, and a member of the MFA Core Faculty.

Bio and photo provided by mollymccullybrown.com

Festival Host

Hayes Davis

Hayes David photo

Hayes Davis is the author of Let Our Eyes Linger (Poetry Mutual Press, 2016), and won a 2022 Maryland State Arts Council Independent Artists Award. His work has appeared in many journals and anthologies, and he was a member of Cave Canem’s first cohort of fellows. An education administrator and high-school English teacher, he lives in Silver Spring with his wife, poet Teri Ellen Cross Davis.