Participants in a poetry workshop conducted by Kansas City’s Glenn North take the stage four nights later to share their works. The readings draw heavily from U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo’s themes of memory, homeland, tribal history, and Native rights in her book An American Sunrise, the centerpiece of the Library’s two-month Big Read 2022.

North presides over the event. The director of inclusive learning and creative impact for the Kansas City Museum, he became the first poet laureate of Kansas City’s Historic 18th & Vine Entertainment District in 2016. He is the author of City of Song, a collection of poems inspired by the city’s jazz tradition and the triumphs and tragedies of the African American experience, and his work has appeared in The Langston Hughes Review, Kansas City Voices, African American Review, and the American Studies Journal, among other outlets.

Explore Big Read 2022 at kclibrary.org/bigread.