Before & After: Poets respond to Richard III (2014)
This article is about a poetry reading in response to Shakespeare's play. For other uses, see Richard III (disambiguation).
The O.B. Hardison Poetry Series reading Before & After: Poets Respond to Romeo and Juliet was on February 21, 2014 in the Folger's Elizabethan Theatre. In Before & After, two local poets, public interest lawyer, law professor and poet Brian Gilmore, and Split this Rock Poetry Festival Director Sarah Browning, responded to Folger Theatre's Richard III (Folger Theatre, 2014). The original work of the poets explored themes from the play, in this uniquely lyrical communication between genres.
Sarah Browning
Sarah Browning is Director of Split This Rock and DC Poets Against the War, author of Whiskey in the Garden of Eden and co-editor of D.C. Poets Against the War: An Anthology. The recipient of an artist fellowship from the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities, she has also received a Creative Communities Initiative grant and the People Before Profits Poetry Prize. Browning has worked as a community organizer in Boston public housing and as a political organizer for reproductive rights, gay rights, and electoral reform, and against poverty, South African apartheid, and U.S. militarism. She was founding director of Amherst Writers & Artists Institute — creative writing workshops for low-income women and youth — and Assistant Director of The Fund for Women Artists, an organization supporting socially engaged art by women. She has written essays and interviewed poets and artists for a variety of publications.
Browning has been involved in several other Folger events: she spoke about Split This Rock at the District of Literature day-long event on September 30, 2013 and is a poetry educator with Poetry-in-Schools at the Folger.
Brian Gilmore
Brian Gilmore is a poet, writer, public interest lawyer, and columnist with the Progressive Media Project. He is the author of two collections of poetry, elvis presley is alive and well and living in harlem, and Jungle Nights and Soda Fountain Rags: Poem for Duke Ellington. His poems and writings are widely published and have appeared in The Progressive, The Washington Post, The Baltimore Sun, The Sugar House Review, and Jubilat. Currently, he teaches law at the MIchigan State University College of Law. He divides his time between Michigan and his beloved birthplace, Washington DC.