Etheridge Knight Poetry Contest: Suggested Curriculum

Indiana high school and middle school students are invited to enter this annual contest co-sponsored by the Etheridge Knight Festival and the Writers’ Center of Indiana.

Poetry Focus: Etheridge Knight

The Poet

Students research Etheridge Knight’s early life, where he grew up, family, time in the service, his expertise at writing and reciting “telling toasts.”
His prison time: how did he end up in prison, how did his previous experiences lead him to writing poetry while he was there.
What did he do with his life when he was released? Look at his experiences after his first book was published; how did he go from a prisoner to teaching at colleges?

His Poetry

Students identify his books of poetry, and listen to his own recordings of his poetry, as well as listening to others read his work.

Topics for Discussion by Students
(in groups or led by a teacher)

1. Students will choose poems by Etheridge Knight, to read aloud; talking about his work, what was his impetus? what drove him as a writer? His initial writing came from a negative place i.e. prison. How do writers use negative or “bad” situations as “fodder” for their work?

2. Students may want to look at other “prison” poets, or writer specifically writing out of negative space; discussing prison as a metaphor.
(Knight believed prison was a form of contemporary enslavement, and that poetry was a way to be “free”, despite incarceration.) How can writing poetry set one “free”? In his writing from prison, Knight merged his personal consciousness with the consciousness of Black People. Knight saw himself as being one with the Black People. How did his work reflect that?

3. Knight’s life was “full of trouble”; his work reflects a blues, moody feelings and experiences. How did this contribute to his writing as a poet?

4. Before prison, Knight was already an accomplished reciter of “telling toasts”, which were long, memorized narrative poems, often in rhymed couplets, in which sexual exploits, drug activities, and violent aggressive conflicts, involving a group of familiar folks, were recited at social events. These narrative poems used street slang, and often obscenities. How might this background have helped and/or hindered his venture in prison as a serious writer/poet? Compare and contrast these “telling toasts” with today’s rap songs.

Writing for Ourselves

Students begin the process of writing poetry themselves, ideally inspired by the poet they have studied and listened to and read. The idea that Etheridge wrote “out of darkness” is to be considered. How can great poetry come out of despair? How did this writer turn a negative experience into a writing career? How did the experiences in his life take him to that place where such a thing could happen? How do we learn from living, and how might our writing reflect that?

Etheridge Knight’s Books

Poems From Prison (1968)
Black Voices From Prison (1970)
Belly Songs and Other Poems (1973)
Born of a Woman (1980)
Essential Etheridge Knight (1986)

Article links

http://www.worldcat.org/wcidentities/lccn-n80-10004
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=81870
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/g_l/knight/knight.htm
http://www.aalbc.com/authors/etheridg.htm
http:/www.bedfordstmartins.com/litlinks/poetry/knight.htm
http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/GLD/.
http://www.prenhall.com/bookbind/pubbooks/quashie/chapter45/.
http://www.poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?prmID=159.

Books

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 41: Afro-American Poets Since 1955, Gale, 1985, pp. 202-211.
Discovering Authors, Gale, 1999.
The Essential Etheridge Knight, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1986.
New Bones: Contemporary Black Writers in America, Prentice Hall, 1995, Chapter 45.
Poems from Prison, Broadside Press, 1968, preface and p. 11.

Periodicals

Black American Literature Forum, Summer 1981, pp. 77-79.
Etheridge Knight, The Academy of American Poets, 1997.
Etheridge Knight, The Academy of American Poets, Bedford/St. Martin's, 1998.