January 26, Shara McCallum-- featured poet at the Midtown Scholar Bookstore

"As long as there have been people on this island, there have been songs, poems, incantations, curses, blessings, prayers, abuses, witticisms, word and sound play and all the core elements that constitute what we call poetry. We know that the Taino people managed to pass onto future generations the rituals of words, thoughts and feelings in other islands." [Claude]McKay remains our first truly distinctive Jamaican poet of the twentieth century, and by any reckoning, he might well be called our first major poet....

The "powerful lyric possibility developed by the great reggae and dancehall artists of the last fifty years that has served as a model and a source of possibility for the contemporary Jamaican poet. Yet, while the stages and the microphones have never stopped sounding the words of poets, a great development of the last few decades has been the publication of Jamaican poets internationally. With two or more books of poetry to their credit, poets like, Shara McCallum, Ann Margaret Lin, Tanya Shirley, Kei Miller, Delores Gauntlet, Earl McKenzie..." --http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/art-leisure/20150801/jamaican-poetry-arise-think-speak-and-live

On January 26, Shara McCallum will be featured performer at the Midtown Scholar Bookstore's Poetry Thursdays, presented by the Almost Uptown Poetry Cartel.

McCallum is a Jamaican-American poet, who has been awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for Poetry. She currently directs the Stadler Center for Poetry and teaches creative writing and literature at Bucknell University. McCallum is the author of Madwoman (Alice James Books, US, 2017 and Peepal Tree Press, UK, 2017); The Face of Water: New and Selected Poems (Peepal Tree Press, UK, 2011); This Strange Land (Alice James Books, 2011), a finalist for the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature; Song of Thieves (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003); and The Water Between Us (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999), winner of the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize for Poetry.

The event, which begins with a short open poetry reading, runs from 7:00 to 8:55 pm. Midtown Scholar Bookstore, 1302 North Third Street, Harrisburg, PA 17102. Phone: 717.236.1680.

Open Poetry Reading, January 19 at the Scholar

On January 19, there will be an open poetry reading at the Midtown Scolar. Come out and read or listen. Good poetry abounds, and We'd love to hear your voice.

The Almost Uptown Poetry Cartel hosts Poetry Thursdays, a community reading series (almost) every Thursday since 1999. Midtown Scholar Bookstore. From 7:00 to 8:55 pm. 1302 North Third Street, Harrisburg, PA 17102, 717.236.1680. Be sure to join us next Thursday, January 26th for our featured performer-- the award-winning director of the Stadler Center at Bucknell, author of Madwoman, Shara McCallum