Fourteenth Annual World of Words Poetry Festival

Dr. Anjail Rashida Ahmad, Poet

Writing Workshop
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Lionel H. Newsom Humanities Building, Room 108
4:00 p.m.

Public Reading
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Sarah Belk Gambrell Auditorium
7:30 p.m.

Dr. Anjail Rashida Ahmad, assistant professor of English and director of the Creative Writing Program at North Carolina A&T State University, is an award-winning poet, speaker, and disability rights advocate.

Ahmad began losing her eyesight in 1998 while completing her doctorial studies at the University of Missouri—Columbia. After a two-year hiatus to adjust to the changes blindness brings, she returned to the university. By 2001, she found it necessary to rely on the red-tipped cane to retain her sense of independence. Since that time, she has won awards and been celebrated for the candor of her poems, especially those about blindness and disability, as well as in her workshops urging writers to reach the marrow of their own authentic voices and stories.

Ahmad is the author of necessary kindling (2001), a collection of poems that was a finalist for the Milt Kessler Book Award. She is also the author of the color of memory (1997).

As a poet who lives brilliantly with blindness, she links her knowledge of the sighted world to her perceptions through blindness with life’s invitation to get involved. In her 2005 article “Seeing Truth,” Maria Johnson of the Greensboro News and Record wrote,” How can a poet — whose job it is to conjure images — be blind? ….she trusts that some things won’t change. The green of grass. The range of human behaviors she once observed...that the truth — the heart of a thing — makes itself known in many other ways. Sound. Smell. Texture. Taste. Energy. These are the things she taps now, in writing, in life.”

Ahmad is the recipient of the Margaret Walker Alexander Award for Poetry, the Robert Frost Prize in Poetry, the Southern Literary Festival Prize for Poetry, and two Janef Preston Prizes for Poetry from The Academy of American Poets. She has conducted workshops and readings at universities, high schools, conferences, and festivals across the U.S. and has been interviewed on various radio programs, such as NPR’s Women Writing for a Change, A&T Today and Triad Arts Up Close.

Her poems have appeared in numerous publications such as African American Review, The Black Scholar, Midlands, and Ikon. In 2006, she founded Black Ink Writers Workshop for writers of the African Diaspora in Greensboro.

Indigo Moor, Poet

Writing Workshop
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Lionel H. Newsom Humanities Building, Room 108
4:00 p.m.

Public Reading
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Sarah Belk Gambrell Auditorium
7:30 p.m.

Indigo Moor’s Tap-Root was published in 2006 as part of Main Street Rag Publishing’s “Editor’s Select Poetry Series.” Moor is a 2003 recipient of Cave Canem’s Writing fellowship in poetry, former vice president of the Sacramento Poetry Center, and member of the editorial board for the Tule Review. He is the winner of the 2005 Vesle Fenstermaker Poetry Prize for Emerging Writers. His work has appeared in the Xavier Review, LA Review, Mochila Review, Boston University’s The Comment, The Ringing Ear, the NCPS 2006 Anthology, and Gathering Ground. Other honors include finalist for the T.S. Eliot Prize and the Crab Orchard First Book Prize.

Black Ink Monks Performance Poetry

Public Reading
Friday, March 27, 2009
Sarah Belk Gambrell Auditorium
7:30 p.m.

The Black Ink Monks is a student-initiated writers group at Johnson C. Smith University, founded in 1994. They are known for their on-campus monthly Grimes Lounge poetry jams and their appearances over the years at various slam venues in Charlotte. In any given year, membership ranges from five to 10 or more students. In 2002, a Charlotte Observer article on their creative activities led to an invitation to do a writing workshop for Advance Placement students at East Mecklenburg High School in Charlotte.

In 2003, the Black Ink Monks worked in collaboration with students at Charlotte’s Myers Park High School and The Echo Foundation to host an open mic event to raise money for the Cities of Asylum Project. In 2003-2004, Monks directed performance workshops in high schools in Union County. Former Monks have gone on to successful careers in graduate school, film production, graphic production, web design and teaching.