Posted on August 15, 2022
The MFA Writing Program at UNC Greensboro and The Greensboro Review will host an alumni poetry reading by James Jabar and Sarah Rose Nordgren on Thursday, October 13 at 6:00 PM at Scuppernong Books, 304 S. Elm Street. The reading is free and open to the public and will be followed by a book signing.
JAMES JABAR is the author of the poetry chapbook, Whatever Happened to Black Boys? an exploration of black maleness in America through persona and form. Throughout the book, black boys from the past and present get to tell their stories, for better or worse, in a variety of different lyrical structures, as if they are singing their own autobiographical songs. Some of these lyrical structures include traditional forms such as sonnets, ghazals, and ekphrastic poems but others are a little more modern such as the definition poem, the choose your own adventure genre, and a poem that even utilizes Facebook likes. The personas used in this collection of poems range from fiction to real but also from the voices of activists themselves. What makes this collection what it is, is that there isn’t one singular archetype of black male experience, but many different variations and forms, which broadens the image of how black men are seen outside of the stereotypes and sometimes limiting ideas we are fed in media.
SARAH ROSE NORDGREN is a poet, essayist, teacher, and editor. Her two books of poetry are Best Bones (2014), winner of the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize, and Darwin’s Mother (2017), a finalist for the 2018 Ohioana Book Award, both from University of Pittsburgh Press, and her chapbook, The Creation Museum, is forthcoming from Harbor Editions in summer 2022. Her poems and essays appear widely in periodicals such as Agni, Ploughshares, The Kenyon Review Online, Copper Nickel, and American Poetry Review, and she creates video and performance text art in collaboration with Kathleen Kelley under the name Smart Snow. Among her awards are two winter fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, an Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council, and fellowships and scholarships from the Sewanee and Bread Loaf Conferences, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. Nordgren holds a BA from Sarah Lawrence College, an MFA in poetry from University of North Carolina Greensboro, and a PhD in English and Creative Writing from University of Cincinnati where she also earned a Graduate Certificate in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Sarah Rose lives in Durham, North Carolina, where she teaches creative writing courses and works as a freelance editor, copy writer, and writing consultant.
