Poetry’s Musical Bloodline: A Sociohistorical Soundtrack

In this lecture, Tyehimba Jess explores the historic connections between music and poetry, with particular interest in music of the African diaspora.

Jess is the author of two books of poetry, Leadbelly and Olio. Olio won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, The Midland Society Author’s Award in Poetry, and received an Outstanding Contribution to Publishing Citation from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association.  It was also nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the PEN Jean Stein Book Award, and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. Leadbelly was a winner of the 2004 National Poetry Series. He received a Guggenheim fellowship in 2018. Jess is a Professor of English at College of Staten Island.  

The Bankhead Lectures are endowed by a gift from the esteemed Alabama family whose service to the state and nation spans five generations, who count among its number senators, soldiers, congressmen, a Speaker of the House, one famously outspoken actress, industrialists, lawyers, writers, farmers, reformers, and many UA alumni. To honor the Bankheads’ enduring legacy of commitment to the state’s economic, educational, and cultural advancement, the lecture series brings to campus prominent writers whose lives and work reflect a similar duty to the future, who exemplify the potential of art and personal courage to confront difficult truths and by inspiring the best of human virtues help us reach toward their attainment within ourselves and our society.

Cost

Free and open to the public