Chitlin Circuit Pop-Up
featuring:
Curtis L. Crisler, Indiana Poet Laureate
Chris Dean, Indiana Beat Poet Laureate
Thomas Kneeland, Poet

Date: Saturday, August 15
Time: 2:00-5:00pm EST
Location: Athenaeum Foundation – Registration Required
Cost: Free and by donation

Curtis Crisler, Indiana Poet Laureate, created the Chitlin Circuit. The term “chitlin circuit” refers to a historical, segregation-era network of safe performance venues for Black musicians, comedians, and entertainers during the Jim Crow era. It is a current, dynamic, modern literary event.

The program is organic and no one really knows what is going to happen.

• The first set is 20 minutes, where three poets feed off what the first poet reads.
• The second set, each poet reads ten minutes of their own poetry.
• The third set the poets read each line of a poem until the last line, which all read together.

There will be two intermissions between sets and food and music are included.

About the presenters:
Curtis L. Crisler has written 13 books, with more always in process. He has received multiple awards and grants and is the Indiana Poet Laureate; his term has been extended to four years. His work exhibits what he calls an urban Midwestern sensibility (uMs)  — “the community and creativity of the varied relationships of descendants from the first through second waves of the southern migration, exploring their connections to place/environment, history, family, and self.” He also created the poetry form the sonastic and the Indiana Chitlin Circuit. Crisler is Professor of English at Purdue University Fort Wayne. http://poetcrisler.com/#home

Chris Dean, Indiana Beat Poet Laureate (2025-2027), is a storyteller, graphic designer, and Magpie Poet who writes from the heart of Indiana where they live with their husband and too many cats to mention. They are the co-founder and managing editor of Keeping the Flame Alive Press and author of three full length books of poetry, tales from a broken girl, we’re all stories in the end, and pyre.

Thomas Kneeland is the Pushcart-nominated author of the chapbook, We Be Walkin’ Blackly in the Deep. His poetry and writing explores ancestry, ecological memory, and the effects of intergenerational trauma within Black, Afro Latine, and Afro Indigenous contexts. A recent recipient of the Edward Stanley Award for poems published in Prairie Schooner, his publication credits include Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora, Southern Humanities Review, Columbia Journal, Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. Kneeland was recently nominated for Hayden’s Ferry Review’s Best of Small Fiction Anthology. Named a 2025 Emerging Scholar by The EDU Ledger, Kneeland is currently an Assistant Professor of English at Anderson University.