Celebrating Gwendolyn Brooks: A Workshop for Young Poets

The University of Illinois Rare Books and Manuscripts Library and Illinois Humanities welcome students in grades 5-8 for an afterschool celebration of poetry and the life Gwendolyn Brooks. Participants will examine materials that belonged to Gwendolyn Brooks (including a spice box filled with keys!) and write poetry using her words and their own imaginations. If you love to read, write, and act out poems, then join Janice N. Harrington, the author of The Chicken Chasing Queen of Lamar County, for this innovative poetry and biography workshop.

Students will be invited to submit their poems to the Gwendolyn Brooks Youth Poetry Awards, a statewide youth poetry competition founded by Gwendolyn Brooks herself when she was Illinois’s poet laureate. Illinois Humanities has been proud to present the competition since 2017.

This workshop is presented by Illinois Humanities and the University of Illinois’ Rare Books and Manuscripts Library. It will be hosted at the Independent Media Center by Janice N. Harrington, a professor at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Food and drinks will be provided.

This event is free and open to students in grades 5 through 8, but space is limited. To register, follow this link: https://www.ilhumanities.org/events/celebrating-gwendolyn-brooks-a-workshop-for-young-poets/#register