Schooled on Poetry

This collaboration between CAPA, Thurber House, ESCCO, the Poetry Foundation, the Columbus Foundation and poet-educator Peter Kahn is the culminating celebration of a year-long Spoken Word poetry project at Dublin Scioto, Grandview Heights, Independence, KIPP and Northland high schools. There will be intra-school group pieces and individual original poems by slam champs from each school. They will be joined by local poets Hanif Abdurraqib and Cynthia Amoah, and Chicago-based poet/musical artist, Christian “Rich Robbins” Robinson and National Book Award finalist Tim Seibles, from Virginia.

We hope to showcase the power of poetry to the Columbus community in a diverse way so that writers of all ages and backgrounds can see poetry as an accessible form of expression.

To learn more about Peter Kahn and the intra-school project, visit https://www.poet-educatorpeterkahn.org/

Tim Seibles, the former Poet Laureate of Virginia, was born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is the author of several books of poetry including Hurdy-Gurdy, Hammerlock, and Buffalo Head Solos. His first collection, Body Moves, (1988) was re-released by the Carnegie Mellon University Press as part of their Contemporary Classics series. Fast Animal was one of five poetry finalists for the 2012 National Book Award. In 2013, he received the Pen Oakland Josephine Miles Award for poetry. In 2014, Tim received an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Misericordia University for his literary accomplishments. During that same year, he won the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Award for Fast Animal, a prize given triennially for a collection of poems. In 2015, he chaired the panel of judges that decided the winner of the National Book Award in poetry. One Turn Around the Sun was published in 2017. His most recent collection, Voodoo Libretto: New & Selected Poems, was released in 2022.

Over the past decade, his poems have been published in three Best American Poetry anthologies.

He has been a workshop leader for Cave Canem, a writer’s retreat for African American poets, and for the Hurston/Wright Foundation, another organization dedicated to developing black writers. Tim Seibles lives in Norfolk, Virginia and is now an Emeritus Professor of English of Old Dominion University where he taught classes for both the English Department and the MFA in writing program.

Hanif Abdurraqib is a poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio. His poetry has been published in Muzzle, Vinyl, PEN American, and various other journals. His essays and music criticism have been published in The FADER, Pitchfork, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. His first full length poetry collection, The Crown Ain't Worth Much, was released in June 2016 from Button Poetry and was named a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Prize, and was nominated for a Hurston-Wright Legacy Award. His first collection of essays, They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us, was released in winter 2017 by Two Dollar Radio and was named a book of the year by Buzzfeed, Esquire, NPR, Oprah Magazine, Paste, CBC, The Los Angeles Review, Pitchfork, and The Chicago Tribune, among others. He released Go Ahead In The Rain: Notes To A Tribe Called Quest with University of Texas press in February 2019 and the book became a New York Times Bestseller, was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize, and was longlisted for the National Book Award. His second collection of poems, A Fortune For Your Disaster, was released in 2019 by Tin House, and won the 2020 Lenore Marshall Prize. In 2021, he released the book A Little Devil In America with Random House, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the The PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. The book won the 2022 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction and the Gordon Burn Prize. Hanif is a graduate of Beechcroft High School.

Rich Robbins is a rapper, songwriter, producer, educator, and television host based in Chicago. Just named Chicago’s Best Individual Hip Hop Artist by the Chicago Reader, Robbins first gained recognition in Madison, Wisconsin's First Wave hip-hop scholarship program. Since then, he's collaborated with various artists, including Shawnee Dez, Mick Jenkins, Saba, and Mother Nature. His work extends beyond the recording booth, encompassing teaching and social advocacy. His latest EP, "Soft & Tender," delves into the nuanced relationship between fatherhood and Blackness and has spawned the Soft & Tender interview series. His latest releases can be streamed on all music platforms.

Cynthia Amoah is a Columbus, Ohio based poet, performer, and teaching artist. She received her MFA from The New School (Poetry) in 2019 where she was awarded the prestigious Paul Violi Poetry Prize (2018), as well as Excellence In Poetry (2019). Amoah began competing nationally in recitation and motivational speaking engagements in 2006. Since then, Amoah’s dynamic voice and strong stage presence has captured and inspired diverse audiences, both locally and globally. Originally from Ghana, West Africa, Amoah’s voice reflects the strong and colorful oral traditions of her homeland, which undoubtedly cultivates and shapes her work. Although influenced by diasporic motifs, Amoah transcends limitations and labels, instead embracing a holistic, multifaceted identity. An activist and humanist, Amoah’s work often highlights lost stories of her immediate worlds, while also transcending the marginalized groups she delineates. This balance is delicate, but she walks it with effectual grace. This grace, and strength as a performer, has secured Amoah performances at prestigious venues, including The Lincoln Theatre, The Columbus Museum of Art, The United Nations Information Center (Accra), TEDxDrewUniversity, and TEDxOhioStateUniversity (where she performed Honam, her most notable poem), among others.