Thirteenth Annual World of Words Poetry Festival

Dr. Patrica Jabbeh Wesley, Poet

Tuesday, March 25

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

Sarah Belk Gambrell Auditorium
Public Reading
7:30 p.m.

Liberia, located on the West Coast of Africa, is Dr. Patricia Jabbeh Wesley’s home.  She has a Ph.D. in Creative Writing and English from Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, and a  M.S. in English Education from Indiana University-Bloomington.

Over the last decades, Liberia has been in the midst of war and civil unrest. The beauty of the Atlantic with its long beaches remains unscarred despite 14 years of war. Wesley’s  poetry is often an outcry against the devastation to her beautiful homeland.

As a child, Wesley and her siblings attended the Tugbakeh Boarding Mission School. Those years were not the most luxurious years, but they helped shape her view of the Grebo people and their cultural traditions, providing her the tools she now uses in her work.  In less than a year, she spoke the Grebo language with fluency, and learned how to wail on the Mat, to eat kola nuts, fight village boys, and stand her own ground. Readers find traces of  simple village people and towns in her books.  

Wesley immigrated with her family to the United States during the Liberian civil war in 1991. She saw the devastation of her homeland, and lived through the massacre of thousands. She had been teaching at the University of Liberia in the English department prior to the war.  In the United States she has completed advanced degrees and published two books of poems.

Wesley, her husband, Mlen-Too, and their children moved to Western Pennsylvania after she completed her doctorate.  

Lyceum Series
Fall 2007 - Spring 2008 Calendar

Click on speaker's name for more information.

Fall 2007

Thursday, September 6 — Byron Pitts, CBS Reporter
Sarah Belk Gambrell Auditorium
7:30 p.m.

Wednesday, September 26 — Harriet Washington, Editor
and Medical Ethicist
“Medical Apartheid”
Sarah Belk Gambrell Auditorium
7:30 p.m.

Thursday, October 4 — Dr. Na’im Akbar, Psychologist
“What Will Our Legacy Be?”
Sarah Belk Gambrell Auditorium
7:30 p.m.

Wednesday, October 24 — Beatrice Thompson, News Anchor and Talk Show Host
Sarah Belk Gambrell Auditorium
7:30 p.m.

Thursday, November 1 — Lyceum Program in Collaboration with the JCSU Violence
Prevention Coalition
Tony Porter, Educator and Activist
“A Call To Men”
Sarah Belk Gambrell Auditorium
7:30 p.m.

Wednesday, November 14 — Dr. Brian Johnson, Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs
“W.E.B. Du Bois, Becoming Agnostic”
Sarah Belk Gambrell Auditorium
7:30 p.m.

SPRING 2008

Thursday, January 24 — Co-Sponsored by the Lyceum
Program and the African and African-American Studies Program
“A Woman, Ain’t I?”
Sojourner Truth as recreated by Kathryn Woods
Dramatic Performance
Sarah Belk Gambrell Auditorium
7:30 p.m.

Wednesday, February 6 — Faculty Showcase Event
Dr. Gregory Thompson
Chair, Department of Music Johnson C. Smith University
Piano and Woodwind Quintet Recital
The Jane M. Smith Memorial Church
7:30 p.m.

Friday, February 15 — Dr. Maha Gingrich's Indian
Dance Students
“Dances of India”
Sarah Belk Gambrell Auditorium
7:30 p.m.

Tuesday, March 18 — Lyceum Program in Collaboration
with THE JCSU Violence Prevention Coalition
Kevin Powell, Political Activist
“Sexism From a Male Perspecitve”
Sarah Belk Gambrell Auditorium
7:30 p.m.

Tuesday, March 25 — Thirteenth Annual World of
Words Poetry Festival
Dr. Patrica Jabbeh Wesley, Poet
Lionel H. Newsom Humanities Building, Room 108
Writing Workshop
4:00 p.m.

Sarah Belk Gambrell Auditorium
Public Reading
7:30 p.m.

Wednesday, March 26 — ANNOUNCEMENT

Due to circumstances beyond our control, these Lyceum Poetry Festival events will be changed. 
Tyehimba Jess is not able to perform at this time.

Thursday, March 27 — Metta S. Sáma, Poet
(Formerly Lydia Melvin)
Lionel H. Newsom Humanities Building, Room 108
Writing Workshop
4:00 p.m.

Sarah Belk Gambrell Auditorium
Public Reading
7:30 p.m.

Friday, March 28 — Thirteenth World of Words
Poetry Festival
Black Ink Monks Performance Poetry
Public Reading
Sarah Belk Gambrell Auditorium
7:30 p.m.

Thursday and Friday, April 10 and 11 — JCSU Ira B. Aldridge
Drama Guild Performance
The Day of Absence by Douglas Turner Ward
Sarah Belk Gambrell Auditorium
7:30 p.m.

Thursday, April 17 — Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon,
Music Historian
“Notes from the Cultural Autobiography of a Freedom Singer”
Sarah Belk Gambrell Auditorium
7:30 p.m.