In this class, participants will be introduced to Gwendolyn Brooks’ favorite poet, Ugandan poet Okot p’Bitek (1931-1982) from Gulu, Northern Uganda. Did you know that when Joy Harjo began writing poetry, she looked for indigenous poetry traditions connecting colonization with native languages translated to English and one of the African poets she studied was Okot p’Bitek? Did you know that p’Bitek’s poem “Song of Lawino” influenced Joy Harjo?
Participants will read from p’Bitek’s famous works “Song of Lawino” and “Song of Ocol”.
We will do a writing prompt from an excerpt of his poems.
Participants will also get a general overview of Bitek’s books and receive a list of p’Bitek books and articles for further reading.
When: June 16, 7:00-8:30 pm EST
Cost: $45 each
Where: Zoom (link provided after registration)
Class Size: 15 participants
About the instructor:
Arao Ameny is a Maryland-based poet and writer from Lira, Lango, Northern Uganda. She is a multigenre writer with a focus on poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. She is currently a biography writer and editor at the Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry Magazine. She earned her MFA in Fiction Writing from the University of Baltimore in 2019. She also earned an MA in Journalism from Indiana University and a BA in Political Science with minors in International Relations and Communications from the University of Indianapolis. She is a former fiction editor and copyeditor at Welter, a literary journal at the University of Baltimore. Her first published poem, “Home is a Woman,” won The Southern Review’s 2020 James Olney Award. In 2021, she was a finalist for the United Kingdom-based Brunel International African Poetry Prize, a nominee for the Best New Poets anthology (USA), and a winner of a Brooklyn Poets Fellowship.
Arao is the recipient of the 2022 Mayor’s Individual Artist Award from the Creative Baltimore Fund, a grant from Mayor Brandon Scott, the City of Baltimore, and The Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts (BOPA). She is also a recipient of the Poets & Writers’ Open Door Career Advancement Grant for women writers of color. The workshops she has attended include Tin House and Kenyon Review Writers Workshop. Her favorite writer is Zimbabwean novelist, short story writer, playwright, and poet Dambudzo Marechera. Previously, she worked in communications at New York City government and as a writer and social media editor at Africa Renewal magazine at the United Nations in New York City.
Follow Arao on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook @araoameny.