Poetry reading ends series

Pitt?s writing program ended this year?s Contemporary Writers Series with a ?spectacular?… Pitt?s writing program ended this year?s Contemporary Writers Series with a ?spectacular? evening of poetry.

Jeff Oaks, a professor in Pitt?s English department, opened the reading by explaining that the writing program was ending the series ?in a spectacular way with three spectacular poets.?

Elizabeth Alexander, Harryette Mullen and Marilyn Nelson read selections of their poetry Thursday night in the Frick Fine Arts Auditorium.

Toi Derricotte, a Pitt poetry professor, introduced the night?s readers as family.

All three women are members of Cave Canem, the first national workshop/retreat for African-American poets, which Derricotte co-founded.

?I?m proud of the quality of writing in Cave Canem poets,? Derricotte said, adding that the poets who attend the workshop are quite diverse.

?You will hear some of that diversity tonight,? she told the audience.

Alexander received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship among other awards and currently is a fellow at the Whitney Humanities Center at Yale University.

Alexander read a new poem about the 1839 Amistad incident, in which 53 Africans, who were taken from Sierra Leone and brought to Cuba in violation of international law to be sold as slaves, revolted on the Amistad ship and ended up in New Haven, Conn.

There the Africans were charged with murder and piracy but were freed after a trial and allowed to return to Sierra Leone as missionaries.

Mullen has received two artist grants and other literary awards and fellowships. She now teaches African-American literature and creative writing in the English department at the University of California at Los Angeles.

Mullen read some old and more recent poetry, including two poems in honor of Derricotte, with whom Mullen and a group of other writers went to Cuba. Mullen also read the title poem from her book, ?Sleeping with the Dictionary.?

?Yes, I have been known to fall asleep with the dictionary and wake with it poking me in ? ? Mullen said.

She paused.

?My back,? she continued. The crowd responded with laughter.

Nelson, named a Connecticut state poet laureate, ended the reading with poems addressing such subjects as George Washington Carver and the lynching of Emmett Till.

Nelson has been a professor of English at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, since 1978 and has received many awards and fellowships, including the Guggenheim Fellowship.

Though this was the last reading of the series, it was not the last reading of the term, Oaks said. The English Department?s Faith Adiele will be giving a reading in celebration of her newly published book ?Meeting Faith: The Forest Journals of a Black Buddhist Nun? on April 6 at 7 p.m. in the Frick Fine Arts Auditorium. The event is free and open to the public.