Nathaniel Mackey and the Our True Day Begun Soon Come Qu’ahttet to perform on October 29

Tuesday, October 29, 2019

6 pm in Brendle Recital Hall, Scales Fine Art Center (Doors open at 5:30 pm.)

The inaugural Edwin G. Wilson Distinguished Artist will be poet and prose artist Nathaniel Mackey, who will perform work from his forthcoming collection Double Trio with musical accompaniment from the Our True Day Begun Soon Come Qu’ahttet. The quartet includes Dorian Lee Parreott II on baritone saxophone, cornet and euphonium; Jason Lentz on oud; Sandy Blocker on balafon and percussion; and Vattel Cherry on bass. Mackey’s collaboration with Our True Day Begun Soon Come Qu’ahttet was first realized at Duke University, where he is the Reynolds Price Professor of Creative Writing, in a three-day national conference on his work. Mackey joins with the group once again for this special performance that blends poetry with exploratory song and sound.

This performance is made possible by the A.E. Finley Foundation and presented by the Creative Writing Program in the Department of English.

Mackey is a world-renowned poet and theorist who draws from African cultural systems and black radical music in serialized books of poetry, prose fiction, and critical poetics that enact his visionary mythopoesis and experimental formal structures. In poems that are often framed by the West African songs of the Andoumboulou, celebratory rites in the Dogon cosmogony, Mackey forges underworlds and otherworlds driven by a poetic language that is syntactically and thematically inflected with the improvised rhythms of American jazz and other innovative music.

He is the author of six books of poetry, the most recent of which is Blue Fasa (New Directions, 2015); an ongoing prose work, From a Broken Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate, whose fifth and most recent volume is Late Arcade (New Directions, 2017); and two books of criticism, the most recent of which is Paracritical Hinge: Essays, Talks, Notes, Interviews (University of Iowa Press, 2018). He is the editor of the literary magazine Hambone and coeditor, with Art Lange, of the anthology Moment’s Notice: Jazz in Poetry and Prose (Coffee House Press, 1993). His honors include the National Book Award for poetry, the Stephen Henderson Award from the African American Literature and Culture Society, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize from the Poetry Foundation, the Bollingen Prize for American Poetry from the Beinecke Library at Yale University, and the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Poetry Prize from the Library of Congress. He is the Reynolds Price Professor of Creative Writing at Duke University.

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Event and parking information:

This event, which is free and open to the public, does not require a ticket to attend. The performance will be held in Brendle Recital Hall in Scales Fine Arts Center at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, October 29, 2019. Doors will open at 5:30 pm. A reception and book signing will follow the event.

Parking for Scales Fine Arts Center (#35 on the campus map) is available behind the building in Lot Q. To park in this lot when entering Wake Forest from the Reynolda Rd. main entrance, turn left onto Allen Easley St. and then right onto Aaron Ln. To park in this lot when entering from the University Parkway entrance, turn right onto Carroll Weathers Dr. and proceed straight through the intersection at the Polo Rd. entrance. At the stop signs, take a left into Lot Q. After parking follow the sidewalk and walk up the large stairs on your left. Enter the building and Brendle will be to your left (M202). Please refer to the parking map for clarification.