Speaking Truth to Power has never been more important.

Join The Public Square at the Illinois Humanities Council and the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum for The Spoken Word Revolution Redux book release party with performances from spoken word artists throughout the night.Performers include Mark Eleveld; Michael Warr; Kevin Coval; Idris Goodwin; Christina Santana; 17-year old Nate Marshall, a junior at Whitney Young HS; and upper 60s year-old poet Jack McCarthyfrom Boston. There will be food, drink, celebrating, and tussling with some hard issues concerning hip-hop and social change.

More about The Spoken Word Revolution Redux

From its earliest days to today, poetry has always been a spoken art. On the page and out loud, poetry is the home for the brilliant, the rebellious, the artists and performers who are changing the world. Today’s spoken word revolution is the literary equivalent to grabbing a culture by the collar and shaking it…hard.

In the tradition of its predecessor The Spoken Word Revolution, Redux brings more of the gripping, moving, innovative, often hilarious poetry in the oral tradition. This redefining collection gathers multiple forms of “spoken word” under the same motley tent—slam, hip-hop, musical interpretations, and youth movements among them. The resulting brew is both satisfying and world-expanding. One audio CD features some of the best poems and poets, immediately live in their own electrifying words and voices.

Praise for the Book

With razor-sharp critical essays from diverse perspectives inter-weaved among poems, forthright, shrewd, and fired by compassion and love, this is a galvanizing, mind-expanding, and hopeful collection.

–Donna Seaman, ALA Booklist

THE SPOKEN WORD REVOLUTION: REDUX, a top 10 pick (came in at #8) in this week’s THE MUST LIST: Ten Things We Love This Week. Pore over the exquisitely expressive language of master poets.

— Entertainment Weekly

Food and drink will be served.

For more information, please call 312.422.5580.