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New York Times bestselling poet, essayist, and cultural critic Hanif Abdurraqib, who will read at the June 13, 2019 Spoken & Heard event at the Dairy Barn Arts Center. (Submitted)

Dairy Barn Arts Center to Feature Poet Hanif Abdurraqib and More June 13


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Thursday evening, June 13, 2019, the Dairy Barn Arts Center is set to host it’s last event in the spring series “Spoken & Heard, Poetry of Departure and Relevance,” curated by Athens Poet Laureate Kari Gunter-Seymour. Featured are internationally acclaimed poet Hanif Abdurraqib and Ohio Beat Poet Laureate John Burroughs.

Hanif Abdurraqib is a New York Times bestselling poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio and host to 42,000 Twitter followers. He is the author of The Crown Ain’t Worth Much (Button Poetry/Exploding Pinecone Press, 2016), nominated for a Hurston-Wright Legacy Award and They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us (Two Dollar Radio, 2017), named a best book of 2017 by NPR, Pitchfork, Oprah Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, Slate, Esquire, GQ, and Publisher’s Weekly, among others. He is a Callaloo Creative Writing Fellow, a poetry editor at Muzzle Magazine, and a member of the poetry collective Echo Hotel with poet/essayist Eve Ewing. Abdurraqib’s latest publications include a book on A Tribe Called Quest titled Go Ahead In The Rain (University of Texas Press, February 2019), a new collection of poems A Fortune For Your Disaster (Tin House, 2019) and a forthcoming history of Black performance in the United States titled They Don’t Dance No Mo’ (Random House, 2020). His poetry has been published in Muzzle, Vinyl, PEN American, and various other journals. His essays and music criticism have been published in The FADER, Pitchfork, The New Yorker and The New York Times.

“My work is trying to uncover things, but also draw people close so I can whisper that which I’m uncovering into their ear instead of yelling it in their faces,” Abdurraqib says.

Ohio’s Beat Poet Laureate John Burroughs. (Submitted)

John Burroughs was recently named Beat Poet Laureate for the State of Ohio (2019-2021) by the National Beat Poetry Foundation and is the owner/publisher of Crisis Chronicles Press, publishing books by some of the world’s best writers. Burroughs is the author of over a dozen books including Loss and Foundering, Water Works, Electric Company, Barry Merry Baloney and The Eater of the Absurd.  In various past lives, John served as playwright-in-residence for the Ministry of Theatre at Marion Correctional Institution, his blog was ranked #1 in several categories on MySpace, he won the first poetry slam he ever competed in, and he co-founded the infamous monthly Lix and Kix Poetry Extravaganza and almost-annual Snoetry: A Winter Wordfest.

Poet Kristine Williams. (Submitted)

Opening poet is Athens’ own Kristine Williams. Williams is the managing editor of the Women of Appalachia Project’s yearly anthology Women Speak, and former managing editor of Riverwind (Hocking College). Her poems have been published in the Huffington Post and Hawk and Whippoorwil. She currently pursues various editing projects in between being a substitute teacher at a Montessori academy in Athens, OH.

Doors open at 5:30 p.m. There will be a cash bar. Those who attend are invited to bring a poem to share with the audience during the open mic session at the end of the evening’s performance.

For more information about the Spoken & Heard events please go to www.dairybarn.org or email Kari Gunter-Seymour at athenspoetlaureate@gmail.com.