Poetry at McLeod: Cornelius Eady

Description

In this innovative series, African American poets reclaim the plantation landscape by exploring the past, present, future, and the imagined in their own voices. Often representing pain, suffering, survival, and perseverance, these poets confirm that plantations are places of conscience. One poet recalled, "Reading poems where my ancestors were was a return. On their behalf I was returning with power. It belongs to them. I would be a part of reclaiming it."Cornelius Eady is the author of Hardheaded Weather (G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2008); Brutal Imagination (2001), which was a finalist for the 2001 National Book Award in Poetry; the autobiography of a jukebox (1997); You Don't Miss Your Water (1995); The Gathering of My Name (1991), which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize; BOOM BOOM BOOM (1988); Victims of the Latest Dance Craze (1985), which was chosen by Louise Glück, Charles Simic, and Philip Booth for the 1985 Lamont Poetry Selection of The Academy of American Poets; and Kartunes (1980).In 1996, Eady and the poet Toi Derricote founded Cave Canem, a nonprofit organization serving black poets of various backgrounds and acting as a safe space for intellectual engagement and critical debate. Along with Derricote, he also edited Gathering Ground (University of Michigan Press, 2006).He has collaborated with jazz composer Deidre Murray in the production of several works of musical theater, including You Don't Miss Your Water; Running Man, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama in 1999; Fangs, and Brutal Imagination, which received Newsday's Oppenheimer Award in 2002.About his work, the poet June Jordan has said, "Cornelius Eady leads and then cuts a line like no one else: following the laughter and the compassionate pith of a dauntless imagination, these poems beeline or zig-zag always to the jugular, the dramatic and unarguable revelation of the heart."His honors include the Prairie Schooner Strousse Award, a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Rockefeller Foundation.He has served as director of the Poetry Center at the State University of New York at Stonybrook, and has taught at Sarah Lawrence College, New York University, The College of William and Mary, The University of Notre Dame, and The University of Missouri-Columbia, where he held the Miller Chair.He currently is Professor of English and the John C. Hodges Chair of Excellence at the University of TN/Knoxville.The CORNELIUS EADY TRIO: National Book Award winner and Pulitzer prize nominated poet Cornelius Eady has set his poetry to song with the Cornelius Eady Trio. Eady's songs tell the story of passing time, the Black American experience, and the blues in the style of Folk & Americana music. Guitarists Charlie Rauh & Lisa Liu join Eady to create layered and graceful arrangements to bolster Eady's adept craftsmanship as a songwriter, lyricist, and poet."The Cornelius Eady Trio, with its rangy stew of influences—British folk, country blues, spiritual jazz, soul, spoken word—represents something really new in contemporary music, a return to a time when lyricism and the old purpose of American poetry were at the center of American songwriting.” Cornelius Eady Trio has performed at Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, AWP Conference, Peabody Essex Museum, and Hill-Stead Museum and recorded at Sun Studio in Memphis, TN. Their latest release, “Don’t Get Dead; Pandemic Folk Songs” was released on June Appal Recordings in November, 2021.