19th Annual Scissortail Creative Writing Festival - Grand Finale, April 6

Indeed, a Grand Finale — the last event (#25 for the Festival) of Saturday morning, all gathered in Estep Auditorium. Quraysh Ali Lansana is the author of 20 books in poetry, nonfiction & children’s literature. His role as host & consultant on the documentary film Tulsa Race Massacre: 100 Years Later earned him an Emmy, as well as other awards. You can read a more detailed bio on the Scissortail Creative Writing Festival website.

The 1st part of his presentation was titled Killing the Negative: A Conversation on Art & Verse, based on a touring exhibition, a collaborative project of visual artist Joel Daniel Phillips & Quraysh that explores the intersections of representation, truth & power. The exhibition is titled Killing the Negative: Poetic Interventions; find the information here.

Quraysh included a few slides of Phillips drawing to show examples from the exhibit.  The exhibition also includes poems by select American poets, including recent US Poet Laureate Joy Harjo, North Carolina Poet Laureate Jaki Shelton Green,  Randall Horton, Rose McLarney, Moheb Soliman, Candace G. Wiley & Ken Hada, who was invited up to read his poems in the exhibit, among them one about a photograph of a Blind Street Musician, “Even the Music.”

Then on to Qurahsh’s The Skin of Dreams: New and Collected Poems 1995 - 2018, a generous selection of his work, including from the 2014 collaboration with Christopher H. Stewart The Walmart Republic (Mongrel Empire Press). He read from a series of short poems with “Bible Belt” in the title, & a piece inspired by Martin Luther King, Jr. (“violence is the language of the unheard”) “Elephants in the Room,” then on to an essay about his 40th high school reunion in Enid, Oklahoma, probing issues of race. He ended with another poem in multiple short parts, on racism & hate, “Symbolism,” with the theme of “hate is lazy, love is work” — the perfect note to end with, & to conclude these very busy 3 days of readings by a vast, complex variety of writers from Oklahoma & beyond, in Ada.