The Emporia State creative writing program will welcome Kansas City poet Glenn North to ESU on April 9 at 6:30 p.m. in the Memorial Union’s Preston Family Room. North’s visit is part of the program’s Visiting Writers Series, in which poets and authors are encouraged to perform their work and engage in meaningful interactions with students.
North is an award-winning poet, social justice activist and currently serves as the executive director of the Bruce R. Watkins Cultural Center in Kansas City. He has served in executive positions at the American Jazz Museum and the Black Archives of Mid-America.
North is largely influenced by the writers and artists of the Harlem Renaissance and the Black Arts Movement, particularly Langston Hughes, who he describes as “a poet for the people.” He explained that he identified with the Black Arts Movement’s goal of “disrupting all of these stereotypes that had been thrust upon Black people and the oppression that Black people had suffered.”
In addition to poetry, jazz music plays a significant role in North’s artistic style. He says that his passion for jazz began during his work at the American Jazz Museum. Amidst the renovations of old Kansas City jazz clubs and the introduction of related museums, he began hosting an open mic poetry event called Verbal Attack. His performances there led to a series of workshops with the Jazz Museum exploring the relationship between jazz and poetry, which eventually led to an executive position.
“That was a great education for me,” said North, “because I think that one of the definitions of poetry is really finding the music in language, and from having the opportunity to work with some of Kansas City’s great jazz musicians … I just really began to think more about how to make my poetry sonically pleasing, and then even thematically writing about some of the jazz legends that helped to make Kansas City the town that it is.”
Currently, North sees his own influence on the culture of modern arts as being more focused on community development than his publications. He describes a sense of pride in having helped Kansas City “understand how poetry can be a part of all kinds of events.” He currently has a poem set up in a branch of the Johnson County Library and has a commissioned poem inscribed on a 10-foot wall in the lobby of an organization called Reconciliation Services.
North also serves the artistic community as an adjunct English professor at Rockhurst. He explains that his primary pedagogical aspiration is to inspire students to take a hands-on approach to learning.
“I’m interested in trying to help students understand the importance of them taking the responsibility for their education,” North said. “And by that, I mean as much as I’m able to impart in a semester, that’s just a blip compared to what I would love to be able to expose students to and so if I can, in some way, plant a seed that gets a student more interested, particularly for me, in English and literature and poetry, then that’s an amazing thing.”
North believes in the importance of involving young people in social justice movements and enabling them to express their opinions through art. He cites examples of youth involvement in social justice matters as old as the Alabama Children’s March of 1963 and as recent as the public outrage against George Floyd’s death in 2020.
“I think that when you are, particularly in college, you really are shaping your identity and you are developing your philosophy of life or your worldview,” said North. “I’m sure there are probably causes that speak to you, things that you see going on in the world that you feel need to be addressed. And so I would say, you know, research those issues so that you know that there’s a foundation for the opinion that you developed for that particular issue, and then write about it … I’m always about young people understanding the power of their voice.”
In addition to his presentation, North will join Kevin Rabas, director of the Reichardt Center, on the Visiting Writers Series podcast, which can be found on Spotify.
