NEW RELEASE:
the skin of dreams:
new and collected poems 1995-2018
The Calliope Group 2019 — Author
the skin of dreams is a remembering, an offering and a gathering of geographies. Traversing twenty-three years of earth and breath Quraysh Ali Lansana's first new and collected works roadmaps small town Oklahoma to southside Chicago in compelling poems that question, surprise and dare. As a direct descendent of the Black Arts Movement and last student of Miss Gwendolyn Brooks, Lansana explores the complicated internal and external terrain of Blackness and history from a post-King, post-Kennedy childhood through the election of the first non-White president, while grappling with the definition of home.
These are poems that cry, sing, scream and see.
Quraysh Ali Lansana of Tri-City Collective, is a Tulsa Artist Fellow and a co-executive producer of Focus: Black Oklahoma, a monthly news and cultural program on Public Radio Tulsa (NPR Affiliate) KWGS, 89.5FM. Quraysh is a poet, author, and educator from Oklahoma.
After graduating from the University of Oklahoma, he moved to Chicago and stayed there for the next 30+ years. He is now back in Tulsa. Check out more of Quraysh's projects through this link https://tricitycollective.com
Listen to FBO here: https://www.publicradiotulsa.org/programs/focus-black-oklahoma
A 2020 Benjamin Franklin Award Finalist!
behind the craft:
On May 31 and June 1, 1921, mobs of white citizens launched attacks n the black community of Greenwood in Tulsa, Oklahoma. No one is entirely sure of all of the inciting action, but the next morning, the ruins of approximately thirty-six blocks of, at that time, the wealthiest black community in the United States, smoldered as hundreds of black men and women were injured or killed and thousands were detained. As a student in Oklahoma, I never heard about this part of Tulsa's history. The Race Riot Commission, formed in 1996 to investigate the events of the massacre, did not release its report until after I had entered college in 2001. Today, this tragic event is finally being both acknowledged and remembered by some, while others deny or ignore the massacre of 1921. 36 Blocks was commissioned by the Bixby High School Wind ensemble in Bixby, Oklahoma, to be premiered at the 2019 Oklahoma Music Educators Association Convention. The piece's influence include ragtime, gospel, 1920's jazz and the spiritual "Hold on Just a Little While Longer". The last chord remains unresolved in hopes that a new ending can be written someday when resolution and reconciliation is achieved in Tulsa. Performed at the Oklahoma Music Educator's Association 77th Winter Conference, January 18, 2019 at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center, Tulsa, OK Composer: Heather Koehn Conductor: Jeremy Parker Featuring Poetry by Quraysh Ali Lansana Copyright 2019 ViaMedia Professional Recordings, LLC