A collaboration of the Black Unicorn Library and Archives Project and the Center for African American Poetry and Poetics (CAAPP), the Poetry Partnership of Pittsburgh workshop aims to:
- Support the work, practices, and aspirations of local poets of color, especially those who want serious encounters and dialogue for their work, but for whom the structures and environs of university pedagogy may not be convenient or healthy;
- Celebrate, honor, and center the knowledge, skills, pedagogies, and creative practices of Pittsburgh poets of color working outside of traditional academic spaces;
- Initiate avenues for mutual resource sharing and exchanges of ideas, influences, processes, pedagogies, and opportunities for writers from various areas of practice;
- Build creative community for poets who may not have one;
- Further reparative efforts to address inequitable distribution of resources between university-centered and off-campus communities, especially affecting poets of color;
- Explore sustainable models for future collaborations of this kind;
- Build upon the legacy of earlier black writers at the University of Pittsburgh who have aimed to serve their communities both on and off campus, specifically through the formation of Africana Studies, Rob Penny’s co-founding of the Kuntu Writers Workshop, and Toi Derricotte’s co-founding of Cave Canem
The application portal will be open now through Dec 15, 2019. For more information about the workshop or its collaborators, click the application link here.