If you do anything today go to www.cavecanempoets.org. We promise you will never forget that you did!
Cave Canem (foreign term ca·ve ca·nem \ˌkä-wā-ˈkä-ˌnem\) a multi-media poetry-with-music ensemble will present an original composition which will reference canonical black texts’ resistance to our national history of racism and maginalization, and re-imagine our social/cultural present and future with a narrative of consciousness, survival, hope and transcendence. Cave Canem’s presentation “Freedom Now” will seek to deconstruct the received ideas and stereotypes encountered in the “white imagination” Taking the lead from Claudia Rankin’s book Citizen which “Marr (ied) prose, poetry, and the visual image, Citizen investigates the ways in which racism pervades daily American social and cultural life, rendering certain of its citizens politically invisible. Rankine’s formally inventive book challenges our notion that citizenship is only a legal designation that the state determines by expanding that definition to include a larger understanding of civic belonging and identity, built out of cross-racial empathy, communal responsibility, and a deeply shared commitment to equality.”—National Book Award Judges’ Citation.
