Join the conversation with American poet Nikky Finney, April 14

Join the Black African Coalition and the ASU African and African American Faculty and Staff Association for a conversation with Nikky Finney about her recent work which explores race relations, social justice, and civil rights.

Finney’s evocative poetry, which directly inspired Michael Abels’ music, was written in 2019, the 400th anniversary of the African presence in America. The intimate, emotionally-charged text — in turns both bold and seductive, and always deeply personal — flits throughout history, with allusions to slave ships, Harriet Tubman, black astronomer Benjamin Banneker, and Olympians Tommie Smith and John Carlos. In Finney’s words, the work is addressed to “both black and white, both enslaved and free, bystander and non-bystander. We were then and now, At War With Ourselves. All of us, one human battlefield.”

Thursday, April 14, 2022
1:30–2:30 p.m.
Student Pavilion (STPV) 321, Tempe campus [map]