‘There are three urgent
and indeed great problems that we face today…That is the problem of racism, the
problem of poverty and the problem of war.’ - Martin Luther King
It is 50 years since Newcastle University awarded an honorary degree to Dr Martin Luther King Jr on 13 November 1967. Back in 2016, I wrote about the significance of what MLK termed 'an inescapable network of mutality.'
NCLA in partnership with Bloodaxe Books tonight launched The
Mighty Stream: Poems in Celebration of Martin Luther King, edited by Newcastle University Professor of Poetry
and Scots Makar Jackie Kay, and Carolyn Forché, Director of the Lannan Center
for Poetics and Social Practice at Georgetown University, Washington. It features poems by a selection of voices who resist racism, poverty and war: Claudia Rankine, Grace Nichols,
Yusef Komunyakaa, Kayo Chingonyi, Rita Dove, Daljit Nagra, Patricia Smith,
Jericho Brown, Cornelius Eady, Toi Derricotte, Vahni Capildeo, Elizabeth
Alexander, Ishion Hutchinson, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Terrance Hayes and many
more.
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| I can't believe Martin Luther King stood here and I'm standing here now - Imitiaz Dharker at the launch of The Mighty Stream |
Coinciding with the launch of a new statue of Dr King which will be unveiled in two days time, the anthology launched tonight in tandem with an exiciting BBC Radio 3 Free Thinking Festival discussion. You can watch the outstanding readings from The Mighty Stream, which in the spirit of the event also streamed globally across the internet for free, below:
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