The Griot Collective of West Tennessee welcomes poet Marcus Wicker on May 21st as part of its Visiting Writers Series at the University of Memphis-Lambuth. Marcus Wicker is the author of Silencer (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017)—winner of the Society of Midland Authors Award—and Maybe the Saddest Thing (Harper Perennial, 2012), selected by D.A. Powell for the National Poetry Series. He is the recipient of a 2021 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship; a Tennessee Arts Fellowship, Pushcart Prize, 2011 Ruth Lilly Fellowship, as well as fellowships from The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and Cave Canem. Wicker will conduct a poetry workshop from 10 a.m. until noon. Space is limited for the workshop and participants must register with the Griot Collective. At 1 p.m., he will give a reading of his poetry. Both events will take place in the Wilder Student Union building in Hamilton Hall and are free and open to the public.
The Visiting Writers’ Series is made possible by a grant from the Tennessee Arts Commission. Wicker’s poems have appeared in The Nation, The New Republic, The Atlantic, Oxford American, Poetry and elsewhere. He is Poetry Editor of Southern Indiana Review, and an associate professor of English at the University of Memphis where he teaches in the MFA program.
The Griot Collective of West Tennessee is a poetry workshop that meets monthly from September through May, sponsors a poetry contest for school children, open mics and a Visiting Writers Series. In October 2022, the Collective will host Black Southern Writers: A Conversation with Poets, Writers and Scholars also on the campus of the U of M-Lambuth.
The University of Memphis-Lambuth is located at 705 Lambuth Boulevard, Jackson. For more information call: 731.422.2524.
