Kevin Coval

The Breakbeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop Kevin Coval

Marc Notes: This anthology shows how hip-hop's musical and cultural force has shaped the aesthetics of and given rise to a new generation of poets. Biographical Note: Kevin Coval is the author of "Schtick," "L-vis Lives: Racemusic Poems," "Everyday People" and the American Library Association "Book of the Year" Finalist "Slingshots: A Hip-Hop Poetica." He is the founder of Louder Than a Bomb: The Chicago Youth Poetry Festival, Artistic Director at Young Chicago Authors, and teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Quraysh Ali Lansana is the author of eight poetry books, three textbooks, a children's book, editor of eight anthologies, and coauthor of a book of pedagogy. He is a faculty member of the Creative Writing Program of the School of the Art Institute and the Red Earth MFA Creative Writing Program at Oklahoma City University. He is also a former faculty member of the Drama Division of The Juilliard School. Lansana served as Director of the Gwendolyn Brooks Center for Black Literature and Creative Writing at Chicago State University from 2002-2011, where he was also Associate Professor of English/Creative Writing. "Our Difficult Sunlight: A Guide to Poetry, Literacy & Social Justice in Classroom & Community" (with Georgia A. Popoff) was published in March 2011 by Teachers & Writers Collaborative and was a 2012 NAACP Image Award nominee. His most recent books include "The Walmart Republic" w/ Christopher Stewart and "reluctant minivan." Nate Marshall is the author of "Wild Hundreds." He won the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize and served as a Zell Postgraduate Fellow at the University of Michigan. A Cave Canem Fellow, Nate won the 2014 Hurston/Wright Founding Members Award and the 2013 Gwendolyn Brooks Open Mic Award. He is a founding member of the poetry collective Dark Noise. He is also a rapper. Brief Description: "This is the first anthology of poems by and for the hip-hop generation. It includes more than four decades of poets and covers the birth to the now of hip-hop culture and music and style"--Introduction. Publisher Marketing: Hip-Hop is the largest youth culture in the history of the planet rock. This is the first poetry anthology by and for the Hip-Hop generation. It has produced generations of artists who have revolutionized their genre(s) by applying the aesthetic innovations of the culture. "The BreakBeat Poets" features 78 poets, born somewhere between 1961-1999, All-City and Coast-to-Coast, who are creating the next and now movement(s) in American letters. "The BreakBeat Poets" is for people who love Hip-Hop, for fans of the culture, for people who've never read a poem, for people who thought poems were only something done by dead white dudes who got lost in a forest, and for poetry heads. This anthology is meant to expand the idea of who a poet is and what a poem is for. The BreakBeat Poets are the scribes recording and remixing a fuller spectrum of experience of what it means to be alive in this moment. The BreakBeat Poets are a break with the past and an honoring of the tradition(s), an undeniable body expanding the canon for the fresher. Review Citations:

Booklist 03/15/2015 pg. 38 (EAN 9781608463954, Paperback)

Contributor Bio:  Lansana, Quraysh Ali Quraysh Ali Lansana is author of five poetry books, three textbooks, a children's book, editor of eight anthologies, and coauthor of a book of pedagogy. He is Associate Professor of English/Creative Writing at Chicago State University, where he served as Director of the Gwendolyn Brooks Center for Black Literature and Creative Writing from 2002- 2011. Our Difficult Sunlight: A Guide to Poetry, Literacy & Social Justice in Classroom & Community (with Georgia A. Popoff) was published in March 2011 by Teachers & Writers Collaborative and was a 2012 NAACP Image Award nominee.