Charleston Currents – poet laureate

GOOD NEWS: Program offers chance to spend night in Old Jail — voluntarily

Staff reports | The Slave Dwelling Project will host a March 4 discussion of recidivism during a at the Old Charleston Jail. Following the discussion will be a chance for listeners to spend the night in the building.

The Slave Dwelling Project uses antebellum historic buildings as classrooms to interpret African American history. The jail was built in 1802 using slave labor and slave-made bricks. Members of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry were held captive there after they were captured during the Assault on Battery Wagner on Morris Island on July 18, 1863.

During the March 4 event, Charleston County Public Library historian Nic Butler will discuss the history of law enforcement in Charleston County. Charleston Interim Chief of Police Jerome Taylor will address the audience on programs that the Charleston Police Department has in place to address the recidivism rate of African Americans. African Americans represent a disproportionate rate of inmates in the American prison system.

by Charleston Currents · 02/19/2018 · Comments are Disabled · Good news, News briefs

HISTORY: Bennie Lee Sinclair, poet laureate

S.C. Encyclopedia | Bennie Lee Sinclair was born on April 15, 1939, in Greenville to Graham Sinclair and Bennie Ward. While she was in the first grade, her first published poem appeared in a teachers’ magazine. Overwhelmed by the attention she received, she stopped writing poetry and returned to it only after the deaths of her father and her brother. A 1956 graduate of Greenville High School, Sinclair entered Furman University, where she received her B.A. in English and later received the Distinguished Alumni Award in 1996. In 1957 she married Thomas Donald Lewis.

by Charleston Currents · 10/23/2017 · Comments are Disabled · Features, S.C. Encyclopedia

SC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Grace Beacham Freeman, poet laureate

S.C. Encyclopedia | Born in Spartanburg on Feb. 18, 1916, Freeman was the daughter of Henry Beacham and Grace Bailey. She attended elementary and high school in the Spartanburg school system and received her undergraduate degree in English, drama, and Latin from Converse College in 1937. In 1993, she received an honorary doctor of letters degree from St. Andrews Presbyterian College.

by Charleston Currents · 10/15/2017 · Comments are Disabled · Features, S.C. Encyclopedia

HISTORY: Ennis Rees, poet laureate

S.C. Encyclopedia | Poet, literary critic, translator, children’s author. Ennis Samuel Rees, Jr. was born on March 17, 1925, in Newport, Virginia, to Ennis Samuel and Dorothy Drumwright Rees. He received his A.B. from the College of William and Mary in 1946, where he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and Omicron Delta Kappa and where he received the Botetourt Medal for distinguished scholarship. The same year he married Marion Ensor Lott.

by Charleston Currents · 10/09/2017 · Comments are Disabled · Features, S.C. Encyclopedia

PALMETTO POEM: Stagnation (a letter 2 America)

By Marcus Amaker, poet laureate of Charleston, S.C.

Amaker (Image by Lisa Livingston)
America has built
too many monuments to war.
Man-made maladies
mounted on Mother Earth.
I’ve seen scars on the skin
of our country’s landscape –
blood-stained band aids
covering exposed bones;
a pain that has not healed.

by Palmetto Poem · 10/02/2017 · Comments are Disabled · Features, Palmetto Poem

S.C. ENCYCLOPEDIA: Archibald Rutledge, poet

S.C. Encyclopedia | Archibald Rutledge was born in McClellanville, South Carolina, on October 23, 1883, the son of Henry Middleton Rutledge III, an army officer, and Margaret Hamilton. Descended from a lineage of notable South Carolinians, Rutledge included among his ancestors John Rutledge, Edward Rutledge, Arthur Middleton, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, and Thomas Pinckney.

by Charleston Currents · 09/25/2017 · Comments are Disabled · Features, S.C. Encyclopedia