Poets Akua Lezli Hope, Owólabi Aboyade , Sherese Francis and Pop A. Mr. E. Sol’Sax will be reading speculative poetry in honor of the birth of Jupiter Hammon, America's first black poet.
The reading will be presented live on facebook via Zoom. Tickets are available via EventBrite. The reading is free.
Established in 1970, Black Poetry Day celebrates the advent of poetry by black poets in America with the birth of Jupiter Hammon, America’s first published black poet, born on October 17, 1711, at the Lloyd Manor in Long Island. Jupiter Hammon composed his first published work, an eighty-eight line poem titled “An Evening Thought: Salvation by Christ with Penitential Cries” on Christmas Day, 1760. In 2013, an unpublished work of Jupiter Hammon was discovered. Entitled “An Essay on Slavery”, it was written about the same time as his most famous, "Address to the Negroes in the State of New York”.