{"id":76127,"date":"2021-04-12T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-04-12T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/acclaimed-poet-honoree-fanonne-jeffers-to-read-from-award-winning-biography-at-rumowicz-lecture\/"},"modified":"2021-04-12T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2021-04-12T00:00:00","slug":"acclaimed-poet-honoree-fanonne-jeffers-to-read-from-award-winning-biography-at-rumowicz-lecture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2021\/04\/acclaimed-poet-honoree-fanonne-jeffers-to-read-from-award-winning-biography-at-rumowicz-lecture\/","title":{"rendered":"Acclaimed poet Honor\u00e9e Fanonne Jeffers to read from award-winning biography at Rumowicz lecture"},"content":{"rendered":"

KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 April 12, 2021 \u2013 Award-winning poet Honor\u00e9e Fanonne Jeffers will discuss and read selections from her latest collection of poetry and prose, \u201cThe Age of Phillis,\u201d as she presents the virtual Edmund S. and Nathalie Rumowicz Annual Lecture<\/a> on Thursday, April 15, at 7 p.m.<\/strong><\/p>\n

As part of National Poetry Month, the virtual event also celebrates the culmination of the Caged Bird Sings Poetry Festival and the winner of the Erica Knowles Undergraduate Poetry Contest. It is free and open to the public. Register at the lecture website<\/a> to receive a link to the live event.<\/p>\n

A writer of poetry and prose that explores black culture, racism, American history and gender, Jeffers is the author of five collections of poetry. Jeffers, a professor of English at the University of Oklahoma, is a recipient of the 2018 Harper Lee Award for Literary Distinction and was recently named the winner of the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work in Poetry for \u201cThe Age of Phillis,\u201d a biography of Phillis Wheatley Peters, the first African American author of a published book of poetry.<\/p>\n

\u201cJeffers makes her readers urgently aware of the legacies of the 18th<\/sup> century,\u201d said Martha Elena Rojas, associate professor and director of the Rumowicz Literature of the Sea Lecture. \u201cWe live in the wake of the transatlantic slave trade and in the era\u2019s political, philosophical, and religious upheavals. Of equal importance to us today: rather than monumentalize Phillis Wheatley solely as a literary icon, Jeffers conjures her as a Black woman in relation with other Black people and, as she writes, \u2018a human being who lived and loved while making her indelible mark on history.\u2019 The book pushes us to see Wheatley\u2019s writing and life in relation to U.S. ideals, and the betrayal of its national promises.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a recent story in The Oklahoman, Jeffers said she felt that \u201cMiss Phillis chose me\u201d to write the biography. The book, which took 15 years of archival research to complete, mixes poetry, prose and scholarship in telling Peters\u2019 story. Peters, who was about 7 years old when John Wheatley bought her as a personal slave for his wife, Susanna, wrote her first published poem when she was about 13. Her only book of poetry, \u201cPoems of Various Subjects, Religious and Moral,\u201d was published in 1773, challenging Western prejudices about African and female intellectual capabilities.<\/p>\n

Released in March 2020, \u201cThe Age of Phillis\u201d was longlisted for the National Book Award in Poetry and is a finalist for the 41st Los Angeles Times Book Prizes.\u00a0In addition, Jeffers has been named one of the 60 fellows in United States Artists’ 2021 class of honorees.<\/p>\n

Jeffers is also an essayist and novelist. \u201cFor me, \u2018Letter on the Endless Mourning of the Present\u2019 remains one of the most elucidating early pieces of writing after Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd,\u201d Rojas said. \u201cIn this essay, Jeffers places one life in the larger context of historic disregard, betrayal, and fatal violence in the United States. Her new novel,\u00a0\u2018The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois\u2019\u00a0(Harper, 2021), already is heralded by reviewers as brilliant, necessary, intimate and expansive.\u201d<\/p>\n

She is also the author of poetry collections \u201cThe Gospel of Barbecue\u201d (2000), \u201cOutlandish Blues\u201d (2003), \u201cRed Clay Suite\u201d (2007), and \u201cThe Glory Gets\u201d (2015).<\/p>\n

The event is sponsored by the Edmund S. and Nathalie Rumowicz Seminar and Annual Lecture in Literature and the Sea, the Departments of English, Africana Studies, Women and Gender Studies, Center for Humanities and the College of Arts & Sciences.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 April 12, 2021 \u2013 Award-winning poet Honor\u00e9e Fanonne Jeffers will discuss and read selections from her latest collection of poetry and prose, \u201cThe Age of Phillis,\u201d as she presents the virtual Edmund S. and Nathalie Rumowicz Annual Lecture on Thursday, April 15, at 7 p.m. As part of National Poetry Month, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":76128,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[12],"class_list":["post-76127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives","tag-college-of-arts-and-sciences"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76127\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}