This Is The Honey: A Great Day In Poetry - DC Tour Stop

MahoganyBooks is thrilled to host a special event on Langston Hughe's birthday for A Great Day in Poetry in celebration of This is the Honey: An Anthology of Contemporary Black Poets, edited by #1 New York Times bestselling author Kwame Alexander. Special thank you to our partners at Planet Word for hosting us at their dope museum.

Poet Abdul Ali will host our featured poets: Kimberly Collins, Kyle Dargan, Brian Gilmore, Reuben Jackson, Alan King, Chet'la Sebree, Clint Smith, & Truth Thomas.

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6:00 PM Doors Open | 6: 30 PM Conversation Begins

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In 1958, Esquire magazine commissioned Art Kane, a young photographer, to photograph as many of the luminaries of the New York jazz scene as possible together. The group included Dizzy Gillespie, Art Blakey, Thelonius Monk, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Charles Mingus, Gerry Mulligan, Count Basie, and many other notable artists. The photo would be used for Esquire’s 1959 Golden Age of Jazz edition, as a way to highlight and celebrate the soundtrack of America. Over the years, other facets of Black America’s Cultural landscape would be commemorated in similar ways: A Great Day in Hip Hop (1998), A Great Day in Hollywood (2018).

In keeping with this tradition, Kwame Alexander has organized A Great Day in Poetry, with events primarily taking place on February 1, 2024—Langston Hughes’ birthday. Coinciding with the publication of his 40th book, This is the Honey: An Anthology of Contemporary Black Poets, A Great Day in Poetry will feature various contributing poets gathering in select bookstores across the U.S., including New York, Washington, DC, Charleston, SC, Boston, and Los Angeles, reading from their work and paying homage to the legacy, and future, of African-American poetry. Find out more at thisisthehoney.com.

About the book: This Is The Honey

A breathtaking poetry collection on hope, heart, and heritage from the most prominent and promising Black poets and writers of our time, edited by #1 New York Times bestselling author Kwame Alexander.

In this comprehensive and vibrant poetry anthology, bestselling author and poet Kwame Alexander curates a collection of contemporary anthems at turns tender and piercing and deeply inspiring throughout. Featuring work from well-loved poets such as Rita Dove, Jericho Brown, Warsan Shire, Ross Gay, Tracy K. Smith, Terrance Hayes, Morgan Parker, and Nikki Giovanni, This Is the Honey is a rich and abundant offering of language from the poets giving voice to generations of resilient joy, “each incantation,” as Mahogany L. Browne puts it in her titular poem, is “a jubilee of a people dreaming wildly.”

This essential collection, in the tradition of Dudley Randall’s The Black Poets and E. Ethelbert Miller’s In Search of Color Everywhere, contains poems exploring joy, love, origin, race, resistance, and praise. Jacqueline A.Trimble likens “Black woman joy” to indigo, tassels, foxes, and peacock plumes. Tyree Daye, Nate Marshall, and Elizabeth Acevedo reflect on the meaning of “home” through food, from Cuban rice and beans to fried chicken gizzards. Clint Smith and Cameron Awkward-Rich enfold us in their intimate musings on love and devotion. From a “jewel in the hand” (Patricia Spears Jones) to “butter melting in small pools” (Elizabeth Alexander), This Is the Honey drips with poignant and delightful imagery, music, and raised fists.

Fresh, memorable, and deeply moving, this definitive collection a must-have for any lover of language and a gift for our time.

A bout the editor: Kwame Alexander is an Emmy Award winning writer/producer, poet, educator, publisher, and #1 New York Times bestselling author of forty books, including Why Fathers Cry at Night: A Memoir in Love Poems, Recipes, Letters, and Remembrances, The Door of No Return, and Light for the World to See: A Thousand Words on Race and Hope. A regular contributor to NPR’s Morning Edition, Alexander is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2016 and 2020 Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award and the 2017 inaugural Conroy Legacy Award. In 2018, he founded the publishing imprint Versify and opened the Barbara E. Alexander Memorial Library and Health Clinic in Ghana, as a part of the Literacy Empowerment Action Project (LEAP), an international literacy program he co-founded. You can listen to his podcast Why Fathers Cry and find him online at KwameAlexander.com.

Our tour stop features: Abdul Ali, Kimberly Collins, Kyle Dargan, Brian Gilmore, Reuben Jackson, Alan King, Chet'la Sebree, Clint Smith, and Truth Thomas

• Please email us at least 7 days in advance at [email protected] should you need any accommodations to attend this event
• Parking is limited. Ridesharing highly encouraged.
• Masks optional.
• Photographs may be taken during the event WITHOUT FLASH.
• Please note, books not picked up at the event can be retrieved at our National Harbor location for two weeks after event day. Afterwhich, they will be donated to a local organization.
• Please tag us and use #mahoganybooks, #blackbooksmatter #ThisIsTheHoney on social media

--Let's have an amazing evening,

The MahoganyBooks Team

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Planet Word, 925 13th St NW, Washington, United States