Muscle & Memory: History & Hope – A Poetry Finale
Adrian Matejka, Marceline White, DaMaris Hill, Elizabeth Hazen, Sacha Marvin, Mistress of Ceremonies, Teri Ellen Cross Davis
*This event includes a book signing
France Hall
Maryland Center for History and Culture
610 Park Avenue
Baltimore, MD 21201

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The 23rd CityLit Festival ends on a high note of poetry and poetic memory, featuring Adrian Matejka, Editor-in-Chief of Poetry magazine, and author of muscular poems from six major collections, Be Easy: New & Selected Poems, publishing this month. “Whatever the form, Matejka’s peerless work aims to revitalize our fossilized language, turning it back into a body of muscle, memory, music,” says Terrance Hayes, author of American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin. A finalist for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, Adrian has been a mainstay of contemporary American poetry for over two decades. This new work speaks to place, race, and identity in contemporary America, “unintentional migration and economic instability.” Joining this year’s featured poet will be the region’s own illustrious poets.  Sacha Marvin is a writer, performer, and urban designer from Tidewater, Virginia. A Cave Canem and Callaloo fellow, Marvin has been a finalist or received awards in Poetry, Acting, Urban Planning, Playwriting, and Screenwriting. Elizabeth Hazen is a poet and essayist whose work has appeared in Best American Poetry, Epoch, American Literary Review, Shenandoah, and other journals. Her most recent collection is The Sky Will Hold. DaMaris B. Hill, PhD, is the author of Breath Better Spent, A Bound Woman Is a Dangerous Thing. Her next book, Blood Bible: An American History, will explore ideas of home from colonial times to our present moment. Marceline White is a Baltimore-based writer and activist whose writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Pangyrus, Consequence, SWWIM, The Ekphrastic Review, and others. Teri Ellen Cross Davis is the author of a more perfect Union (The 2019  Journal/Charles B. Wheeler Poetry Prize) and Haint (2017 Ohioana Poetry Award). She is the 2020 Poetry Society of America’s Robert H. Winner Memorial Prize winner.

Visit the News Section for detailed information.

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CityLit Project in partnership with Maryland Center for History and Culture present Bearing Witness: Literature as a Revolutionary Act. This celebration of the arts showcases a bevy of leading poets and writers on April 11, 2026. We’re talking fiction, nonfiction, poetry galore, and ways to up the ante on your craft.

Download the CityLit Festival: Bearing Witness flyer with the schedule.

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