The National Black Poetry Day Festival event will feature live poetry, authors, publishers, visual artists, and small business vendors. All talent coming from around the local Nashville area. Here you will be able to enjoy live poetry as you peruse the local vendors and interact with the artist. General admission (which includes author exhibits, artist gallery, merchant vendors) is FREE National Black Poetry Day is Oct. 17, an unofficial holiday to celebrate Black wordsmiths, the importance of Black heritage and literacy along with the contributions made by Black poets and writers.
We celebrate the contributions of all African Americans to the world of poetry; Some of the most notable are Langston Hughes, Phyllis Wheatley, Paul Laurence Dunbar and Maya Angelou. The date was chosen in honor of Jupiter Hammon, who is believed to be the first African American to publish poetry in the United States. He was born into slavery in Long Island, New York on October 17, 1711. He was an effective businessman in handling his master’s estate, but he is best known for his poetry and for the “Hammon Address,” the inaugural speech to the African Society of New York City. His poem “An Evening Thought” was first published on Christmas Day (1760) at the age of 49. The day was first proposed by public library director Stanley A. Ransom in 1970 (in New York) and in 1985 with a bill introduced to recognize the day as a state holiday (in Oregon). In 2019, an official site (blackpoetryday.org) spearheaded in Arizona has been established to highlight activities and events honoring the day, and to encourage national participation. In 2020 Po’boys and Poets; Local Nashville Poetry Group and Curators of Art saw fit to bring the Celebration to Nashville.
In collaboration with Everything but Country Music and The Free Poetry Library we bring you an art festival that spotlights poetry while simultaneously uplifting the all creative and the Art of the New Age. We feel that we don’t have to wait for an opportunity to be given to us to give honor to great poets that proceed us and to inspire the generations of poets that succeed us. We strive to be the Change we want to see.
