Callaloo

The following roundtable was conceived towards the end of outlining the general shape and tenor of an undeniable resurgence—what one might even call, however provocatively, a renaissance—regarding contemporary poetry produced by writers across the African Diaspora. Given the sheer number of black poets currently publishing first collections, serving on the mastheads of literary journals, founding collectives, and winning some of the nation’s foremost literary prizes, the question of historical moment necessarily rises to the fore. Can we think of these various poets, disparate as they are regionally and aesthetically, as constituting a literary movement or school of thought? What formal or political elements of their work might be illuminated by such a distinction? What might be lost, or blurred beyond recognition?

In the pursuit of such questions—and what’s more, the new vistas for creative praxis and collaboration they make available—Callaloo has convened a group of poets, namely A. H. Jerriod Avant, Safiya Sinclair, Wendy S. Walters, Rickey Laurentiis, Phillip B. Williams, and Ladan Osman, in order to have a conversation about both the borders and heretofore untapped possibilities of the contemporary field. Therein, the aforementioned writers think together about everything from the role of the university as an always already fraught home base for the black poet—which is also to say, the university space as a site of both productivity and protest—to the ever-looming specter of state-sanctioned violence as a catalyst for collective literary labor.

Let these poets tell it, there is no easy line to be drawn between this present generation of black poets and all those that have gone on before. Their influences and inspirations are clear, as are the historical and political commitments that undergird their work and give it life. Here, we are reminded time and time again that to think critically about the present landscape, to shape it with integrity and rigor, is also to grapple with the materials that various African diasporic literary traditions have made available to them; not only to remember the work of their literary antecedents, count it as precious, but to recode that canon for a contemporary audience. To return to the archive unabashedly, and bid it sing.

—Joshua Bennett [End Page 277]

This conversation, arranged by the staff of Callaloo in College Station, TX, was conducted and recorded via a conference telephone call on February 26, 2016. Between March 24 and April 7 each poet edited his/her own section. The following poets, in order of speaking, participated in the conversation from their particular locations: Joshua Bennett (who served as directing voice, New York City), Ladan Osman (Chicago), Rickey Laurentiis (Brooklyn), Phillip B. Williams (Atlanta), A. H. Jerriod Avant (Provincetown, MA), Safiya Sinclair (Provincetown, MA), and Wendy S. Walters (New York City).