This talk, beginning with its title, which echoes a phrase uttered by Nikki Giovanni in an interview featured in the documentary Going to Mars, is meant to induce and enact meditation on black poetry as the infinite rehearsal of an infinite conversation, an improvisational movement that Prof. Giovanni’s work exemplifies. By paying a little close attention to the radical and genre-redefining richness of the interview in her work, we’re gonna try to see and hear how we can taste and feel as we come and go how black poetry-verse or prose, jazz or drill, quilt or callaloo-recursively advances.

This event is co-sponsored by Florida State University’s Civil Rights Institute and Department of English with additional support from the Challenger Learning Center of Tallahassee, FSU’s African American Studies Program, and the Frances Cushing Ervin Chair in American Literature.