Celebrate the publication of this instructional guide to poetry, literacy and social justice in the classroom and community. Join us for a reception and words of wisdom from Lansana, Popoff, Carol D. Lee and Haki Madhubuti.

Lansana and Popoff have spent nearly two decades in classrooms and community-based settings across the country, from K-12 to graduate schools, working with students and teachers in developing best practices for reading and writing poetry as a means to greater understanding of the human experience, cultural diversity, and pop culture, as well as language arts/reading comprehension constructs. The book is intended to support both teachers and teaching artists with the aim to aid them in recognizing the value of poetry as a vehicle to access meaning/inference, cross-curricular applications, acceptance of others, and self identity. With a foreword by Dr. Carol D. Lee (Safisha Madhubuti), the book includes a series of essays that share poignant tales of specific classroom/workshop experiences, effective instructional processes in both reading and creating poetry, and comprehensive lesson plans to support the pedagogy presented throughout the book. It has been 30 years since the last publication of a book suitable for K-12 classrooms that explores poetry as a vehicle for social justice.

Quraysh Ali Lansana is author of five poetry books, a children’s book, and editor of seven anthologies. He is Director of the Gwendolyn Brooks Center for Black Literature and Creative Writing at Chicago State University, where he is also Associate Professor of English/Creative Writing

Georgia A. Popoff is a poet with two published collections of poetry, a teaching artist, arts-in-education professional development specialist, managing editor of Comstock Review, Downtown Writer’s Center faculty member, and former board member of the Association of Teaching Artists.

Co-sponsored by: Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, Young Chicago Authors, Guild Complex, Teachers & Writers Collaborative, and The Public Square

RSVP by February 8, 2011 to Kelly Saulsberry at ksuzanne@uic.edu