Cover of Jail Verse Poems from Kondenquin Prison by Cameroon author and political prisoner Enoh Meyomesse . (PEN International) “Sometimes: the struggle and willingness to say the unsayable –– has cost poets and artists their lives.”––from Journey through the Power of the Rainbow Each year the value, presence, and volume of poetry in the world intensifies after spring arrives largely because the international community celebrates March 21 as World Poetry Day and people in the United States celebrate National Poetry Month in April. Both of these events since their establishment––National Poetry Month by the Academy of American Poets in 1996 and World Poetry Day by UNESCO in 1999––have served to magnify the focus on, and respect for, poetry as a universal cultural legacy. People around the globe felt World Poetry Day significant enough that they celebrated it (some are still doing so) in a number of notable ways, from individual blog posts and the public...

                                 ( embossed graphic courtesy of Bright Skylark Literary Prods ) Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance , first published by Facts On File in 2003 and through Infobase Publishing in 2010, is now available as a Kindle Edition on Amazon and that is big news for a lot of good reasons. For one, 2013 marks the tenth anniversary of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance’s publication and a new edition of a new edition of a modern award-winning classic is always a good way to celebrate such occasions. Secondly, advances in technology proved a powerful component of the Harlem Renaissance just as it has in the contemporary era. During the 1920s and 1930s, important developments took place through the growing radio and the recording industries. Those advances not only allowed African Americans to showcase and preserve the marvels of black music such as jazz , ragti...

Cover of the forthcoming Visions of a Skyalrk Dressed in Black eBook . The story behind the annual Juneteenth celebration is now fairly well known. The event commemorates June 19, 1865, the day slaves in Galveston, Texas, and other parts of the state learned for the first time they had actually been freed via the Emancipation Proclamation two years earlier. There is not much with which to compare such an event to in the year 2012 . But try this: imagine how a group of prisoners might feel if they learned their innocence had been proven years ago and orders for their release signed but left forgotten in someone’s desk drawer. At this point in time, just three years before the 150th anniversary of Juneteenth, the holiday has come to represent a great deal more than recognition of delayed freedom. A statement from the Juneteenth Worldwide Celebration website founded by Clifford Robinson put it as follows: "Juneteenth is a day of reflection, a day of renewal, a p...