Join MoAD and Black Freighter Press for the third event in our four-week Community Voices: Poets Speak series. Featured poets Raymond Nat Turner and Duane Horton will share new original poetry written in response to the current exhibitions on view. They will also describe the processes of writing ekphrastic poetry in response to visual art.

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Every Friday at 5pm from January 12th-January 26th, different poets will read new work in the MoAD galleries. These readings and discussions culminate with an evening of performance by all the poets in this series on February 2nd.

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About the Poets

“The Town Crier,” Raymond Nat Turner, is a NYC poet privileged to have read at the Harriet Tubman Centennial Symposium. He is Artistic Director of the stalwart JazzPoetry Ensemble UpSurge!NYC and has appeared at numerous festivals and venues including the Monterey Jazz Festival and Panafest in Ghana West Africa. He currently is Poet-in-Residence at Black Agenda Report. Turner's work has also been anthologized and published in other online and print  publications. He is former Co-Chair of the New York Chapter of the National Writers Union (NWU). Turner has opened for such people as James Baldwin, sportswriter Dave Zirin and CA Congresswoman Barbara Lee following her lone vote against attacking Afghanistan.

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Duane Horton is a black queer fantasy writer who currently resides in the Bay Area. He believes in writing his intersection of identity into his fantasy stories so that those who share his intersection of identity can see themselves represented on the page. Duane graduated with his MFA in Creative Writing from Mill College in 2019 and since then, he has been featured in Free Spirit literature magazine, Green Mountains Review, Sea Glass Literary, Sapphire Hues Press and more. Duane is an avid reader, anime watcher and a huge Buffy the Vampire fan and can be found watching reruns on Hulu.

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This program series is presented in partnership with Black Freighter Press. Black Freighter Press publishes revolutionary books. They are committed to the exploration of liberation, using art to transform consciousness.  A platform for Black and Brown writers to honor ancestry and propel radical imagination.