The Unsettlements: Poetry & (Un)Monuments

We will be having a gathering to read the poems of Houston poet Lorenzo Thomas out loud communally from 10am – 12pm. We will also talk and write together. We will meet at Allen’s Landing Park at 1005 Commerce St, Houston, TX 77002 by the bayou.

Coffee and breakfast tacos will be provided.

We will read from the book The Collected Poems of Lorenzo Thomas (https://www.weslpress.org/9780819578983/the-collected-poems-of-lorenzo-thomas/). Bring your copy or read from photocopies that will be provided.

The Collected Poems of Lorenzo Thomas is the first volume to encompass his entire writing life. His poetry synthesizes New York School and Black Arts aesthetics, heavily influenced by blues and jazz. In a career that spanned decades, Thomas constantly experimented with form and subject, while still writing poetry deeply rooted in the traditions of African American aesthetics.

Lorenzo Thomas was a poet and critic. He was part of the Black Arts Movement in New York City and a member of the Umbra workshop. Thomas authored poetry collections that incorporate the personal and the political, including Chances Are Few (1979, reissued in 2003), and The Bathers (1981). Thomas also released Dancing on Main Street (2004), Extraordinary Measures: Afrocentric Modernism and 20th-Century American Poetry (2000), and Don’t Deny My Name: Words and Music and the Black Intellectual Tradition (2008). Thomas graduated from Queens College in New York in 1967 and continued on to graduate studies at Pratt Institute. He joined the Navy in 1968 and served in the Vietnam War. Thomas first moved to Houston as a writer-in-residence at Texas Southern University in 1973. He taught writing workshops at the Black Arts Center and was an English professor at the University of Houston’s downtown campus.

This event is funded in part by the City of Houston through Houston Arts Alliance.