Furious Flower Poetry Center Continues to Blossom

Under the new leadership of Executive Director Lauren K. Alleyne, professor of english, the Furious Flower Poetry Center (FFPC) has expanded its commitment to celebrating and educating the public about Black poetry by broadening the range of poets participating in its programs.

“As a Trinidadian-born immigrant, it’s important to me to ensure that the ‘Black’ in our mission is inclusive of poets and work outside of the United States,” said Alleyne. “I want to bring knowledge of those poets to American audiences, give those poets an opportunity to expand their platforms in the U.S. and, through this exchange, reveal diasporic connections.”

In September, a group of interdisciplinary students from the University of Liberia and the University of Virginia visited Furious Flower Poetry Center. The group, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Embassy in Monrovia, Liberia, visited with the UVA Landscape Studies initiative Project Manager Allison James. Alleyne and Assistant Director L. Renée introduced Furious Flower’s rich history and current programs to the group, then co-led a poetry workshop on how to engage history through poetry.

The 2022-2023 Furious Flower Reading Series focused on including poets with Caribbean heritage. The series began in September with a poetry reading by award-winning British-Caribbean poet Malika Booker. In February, Afro-Canadian poet M. NourbeSe Philip will be participating in the series as part of the annual African, African American, and Diaspora (AAAD) Studies Conference. Mervyn Taylor, a Trinidadian poet, will give a reading in March. All of these events are free and open to the public, and will be Livestreamed on the center’s Facebook page and posted on its YouTube channel.

In mid-December, Furious Flower received a $50,000 ‘Equity in Verse’ grant from the Poetry Foundation, which “supports nonprofit and literary organizations [...] led and staffed by people of color.” They will use this grant next summer to convene educators who will create an open-access Furious Flower syllabus to be taught nationwide leading up to the fourth Furious Flower Conference in 2024.