Announcing Witness Remember Resist: A Spring Festival of Poetry
February 4, 2025
The RCAH Center for Poetry proudly announces Witness Remember Resist: A Spring Festival of Poetry, to be held between March 26th and April 19th, 2025, at the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities at Michigan State University.
Witness Remember Resist presents a wide range of dynamic contemporary poets from around the region and the country. We aim to celebrate poetry as a living art, a vital source of solace and inspiration during a period of division and uncertainty.
The festival begins with a reading on March 26th featuring legendary poet (and MSU alum) Carolyn Forché, alongside Brad Johnson, a rising talent. The reading is presented by Wheelbarrow Books, an imprint of the RCAH Center for Poetry with publication and distribution by MSU Press. Forché will offer a poetry workshop the following day. Forché is known for coining the term “poetry of witness”—and for her own work witnessing and reckoning with violence around the globe.
On April 2nd, we will host poet Airea D. Matthews for a reading. Described by critic Dan Chiasson as “virtuosic, frantic, and darkly, very darkly, funny,” Matthews’ first book, Simulacra, won the prestigious Yale Series of Younger Poets’ Prize in 2016; her second book, Bread and Circus (Scribner, 2023) won the 2024 LA Times Book Prize in Poetry. She will host a workshop the following day. These events are made possible by generous support from Kresge Arts Detroit.
On April 9th, we will welcome Haudenosaunee poet and multimodal artist Kenzie Allen for a reading. Allen is the author of Cloud Missives (Tin House, 2024), recently longlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry. Her visit is cosponsored by the Native American Institute at Michigan State University. She will also offer a workshop the following day.
Our season will close on April 19th with Summer Slam V, organized by former Lansing Poet Laureate Masaki Takahashi. A raucous annual event, the slam will feature Michigan State students and local Lansing poets competing against invited poets from around the region and the country.
All readings will be held in the RCAH Theater on the Terrace Level of Snyder-Phillips Hall, 362 Bogue Street, East Lansing, at 7pm. Details and times for the workshops will be forthcoming shortly; please visit poetry.rcah.msu.edu for the latest updates and details.
Please direct all media inquiries to Toby Altman, Director of the RCAH Center for Poetry: altmanto@msu.edu.