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National Poetry Month Event @ Blanc Gallery
April 20 @ 2:00 PM – 4:00 PM
For National Poetry Month, the Guild Complex offers a special program featuring the newly minted Indiana State poet Laureate Curtis Crisler, alongside the current Illinois Poet Laureate and the most prolific Miss Angela Jackson.
The program will also feature special performances from the Write It Down! Collective.
BIOS:
Curtis L. Crisler was born and raised in Gary, Indiana. Crisler, an award-winning poet/author, has a new book called Doing Drive-bys on How to Love in the Midwest. He has six poetry books, two YA books, and five poetry chapbooks. He’s been published in a variety of magazines, journals, and anthologies. He’s co-editor of poetry for the museum of americana. He created the Indiana Chitlin Circuit and the poetry form called the sonastic. He’s the Indiana Poet Laureate and Professor of English at Purdue University Fort Wayne (PFW). He can be contacted at www.poetcrisler.com.
Angela Jackson is a Chicago poet, playwright, and novelist. She has received numerous honors for both fiction and poetry, including the 2022 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Pushcart Prize, the Poetry Society of America’s Shelley Memorial Award, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Illinois Arts Council. Her poetry collection All These Roads Be Luminous (1998) was nominated for the National Book Award, and her debut novel, Where I Must Go (2009), won the American Book Award. In addition to Comfort Stew, Jackson has written several other plays: Witness! (1978), Shango Diaspora: An African-American Myth of Womanhood and Love (1980), and Lightfoot: The Crystal Stair.