Book swap Monday (and poetry, too)

Monday, September 12, 2016

Public Square, Downtown Cleveland – 2:30-7 p.m.: 
Gather on Cleveland Foundation Centennial Plaza in Cleveland Public Square for a book swap and afternoon of entertainment (including the poetry performance group "Distinguished Gentlemen of the Spoken Word") in honor of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards and the inaugural Cleveland Book Week. Bring a book or find one there, then mingle with other readers and swap books! 

Books for youth and adults will be available for free from the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards and the Cleveland Kids' Book Bank until quantities run out! 

Throughout the Swap, connect with local reading and literacy-focused nonprofit organizations, and peruse your new book while enjoying live music from the Roots of American Music and Cleveland Foundation Uptown Saturday Nights Festival artists SpYder Stompers and Sugar Pie and Eric Seddon’s Hot Club.

Mitchell's Homemade Ice Cream will be on the plaza to give away free scoops to the first 500 people who present their library card. If attendees don’t have a library card, Cleveland Public Library and Cuyahoga County Public Library will be registering for new cards on-site. In case of inclement weather, the event will be held on Tuesday, September 13.

Join us for this all-ages book party on Cleveland Foundation Centennial Plaza at Public Square!

SCHEDULE
2:30 Book Swap Opens
2:30 - 4 p.m. Music from SpYder Stompers and Sugar Pie
3 p.m. Cleveland Association of Black Storytellers
4 p.m. The Distinguished Gentlemen of Spoken Word
4:30 - 7 p.m. Music from Eric Seddon’s Hot Club
4:30 p.m. Happy Hour Cash Bar Opens
6 p.m. Cleveland Association of Black Storytellers
7 p.m. Event End

• Facebook Event Page
• Story at Cleveland.com

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...and if a book swap doesn't do it for you, how about poetry underneath planetarium stars?

Friday, September 16, 2016

Rowan Ricardo Phillips (2016 Poetry Winner, Heaven)

Shafran Planetarium, Cleveland Museum of Natural History – 3:30 p.m.

FREE EVENT – REGISTER

Escape the confines of Earth and travel to an otherworldly state of mind with 2016 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award recipient Rowan Ricardo Phillips. The author will read from his poetry collection, Heaven, under stars and imagery in Shafran Planetarium. Brief introduction by Museum Astronomer Jason Davis. Advance registration is required. Copies of Heaven will be on sale in the Museum Store, and Phillips will sign autographs before the reading, starting at 3pm. Phillips, a translator, critic and poet, splits his time between Barcelona and New York City, and also writes about basketball and soccer for The New Yorker.

• Cleveland Book Week

Cleveland Premiere of Poetry is an Island at Karamu House

Please join us for the Cleveland premiere of Poetry is an Island,

a new feature documentary about the life and work of St. Lucian

Nobel Laureate poet, playwright and painter Derek Walcott at

Karamu House on Sunday, August 17th, from 2 to 5 pm. It's

a celebration of the importance of the arts in everyone's life.

The program will include live St. Lucian Steelpan music, a reading

from the Derek Walcott play Dream on Monkey Island, images

of Derek Walcott's and his son Peter Walcott's paintings and an

80 minute feature documentary about Derek Walcott's life

followed by a live Skype Q&A interview with the director of the film,

Ms. Ida Does, from The Netherlands.

Tickets at the door ($12).

We hope to see you there.

Sponsored by the the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards,  
presented by the

Cleveland Foundation

Karamu House
2355 East 89th Street
Cleveland, Ohio
216-795-7070 
 

Sponsored by the the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards, presented by the

Cleveland Foundation

  

More about the film:

  

"Derek Walcott, Poetry is an island, is a feature documentary film about

Nobel laureate, poet, playwright, and visual artist, Derek Alton Walcott

(1930). The film depicts an intimate portrait of Walcott, as we visit his art

studio, his childhood home, and his current residence in St. Lucia. It also 

includes exclusive archive material from the Nobel Prize Festivities in 1992. 

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, this film is about Walcott’s poetry.

Derek Walcott grew up in St. Lucia–Castries–in a small family. His father

died when he was very young, and so, Derek, his twin brother Roderick,

and their sister Pamela, were raised by their single mother. Walcott is of

African, English and Dutch descent. He grew up in an artistic ambiance,

his father being a painter and writer, and his mother–a teacher–encouraging

him from early on to write poetry.

In Poetry is an island  we share Caribbean moments with Walcott as we

visit some of his favorite places, his studio, and St. Lucia home. We travel

through St. Lucia and encounter childhood friends whose ‘lives became

poetry’ through Walcott’s work. We discover the anger and frustration that

the poet holds against the downtime of the arts as he talks to us about the

meaning of poetry to him personally, and about the significance of art for

humanity. Family members reveal some of the poet’s life challenges, and

people who have worked with him speak frankly about their experiences

with Walcott. Poetry is an island is an intimate portrait of the man, the poet,

and son of the Caribbean: Derek Walcott."

Karamu: 100 Years in the House