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
Saturday, April 11, 2026
4:20 PM – 6:00 PM
Includes a book signing
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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.
Adrian Matejka is the author of six poetry collections and the graphic novel Last on His Feet. He has been nominated for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, served as the poet laureate of Indiana from 2018 to 2019, and is editor-in-chief of Poetry magazine. He lives in Chicago, and his latest collection of poetry, Be Easy: New & Selected Poems, will be released by Liveright in 2026. “This exceptional collection from Matejka puts his agile, musical voice, vivid imagery, and talent for cultural critique on full display. The result is a fantastic entry point for readers unfamiliar with Matejka’s work. An essential volume for his fans.” — starred review from Publishers Weekly.
adrianmatejka.com
Instagram: @adrian.matejka
Elizabeth Hazen is a poet, essayist, and teacher. She is currently teaching poetry at Maryland Correctional Institution at Jessup through the Goucher Prison Education Partnership. Her work has appeared in Best American Poetry, Epoch, American Literary Review, Shenandoah, and other journals. She has published three collections of poetry: Chaos Theories (2016), and Girls Like Us (2020). Her latest work, The Sky Will Hold, “sees straight through to the bone—whether navigating blended family dynamics, middle-age awakenings, or the tender, fraught terrain of mothering a nearly-grown son. Hazen’s lines are taut as a held breath, each word carrying weight without excess, each image landing with startling accuracy, “ writes Charlotte Pence, author of Code and Many Small Fires. Elizabeth lives in Baltimore with her family.
elizabethhazen.com
Instagram: @lizhazenpoet
DaMaris B. Hill, PhD, is a poet, creative scholar, and administrator. She is the author of Breath Better Spent: Living Black Girlhood, A Bound Woman Is a Dangerous Thing: The Incarceration of African American Women from Harriet Tubman to Sandra Bland, The Fluid Boundaries of Suffrage and Jim Crow: Staking Claims in the American Heartland, \Vi-zə-bəl\ \Teks-chərs\ (Visible Textures), and other works. Her digital work includes “Shut Up In My Bones,” a twenty-first-century poem. Of A Bound Woman, Publishers Weekly writes, “Through poetic memoir, biographical sketches, and archival black-and-white photographs, Hill’s first full-length collection gives voice to the history of black women in the United States who have undergone incarceration and oppression. To be bound suggests to be trapped; however, Hill’s poems illustrate how oppression can summon inner-strength, resistance, and revolution.” Similar to her creative process, Hill’s scholarly research is interdisciplinary. Hill is a Professor of English and Creative Writing and Chairperson with the Department of English and Language Arts at Morgan State University.
damarishill.com
Instagram: @damarishill_writer
Sacha Marvin is a writer, performer, and urban designer from Tidewater, Virginia. A recipient of fellowships from Callaloo and Cave Canem, Marvin’s written work can be found in The Adroit Journal, Split this Rock, EcoTheo Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. Marvin has been a finalist or semi-finalist for prizes for poetry and screenwriting at The Georgia Review, Indiana Review, Frontier Poetry, Black Lawrence Press, Glass Poetry, Two Sylvia’s Press, the Vail Film Festival, and the Richmond International Film Festival. Sacha Marvin currently resides in Washington DC.
Instagram: @Noonevening
Marceline White is a Baltimore-based writer and activist whose writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Pangyrus, Consequence, SWWIM, The Ekphrastic Review, trampset, yolk, Prime Number, The Orchard Review, The Indianapolis Review, Atticus Review, and others. She has received fellowships from Aspen Words, the Key West Literary Seminar, and an AWP Writer-to-Writer mentorship. Twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize and three times for Best of the Net, when not writing, Marceline can be found serving her two cats and telling her son to text her when he arrives at the EDM show. She serves on the board of CityLit Project.
marcelinewhitewrites.com
Instagram: @maulflanders
Teri Ellen Cross Davis is the author of a more perfect Union (2019 Journal/Charles B. Wheeler Poetry Prize) and Haint (2017 Ohioana Book Award). She is the winner of the Poetry Society of America’s 2020 Robert H. Winner Memorial Award. In 2022, she was one of two individual state-wide recipients of the Maryland State Arts Council Individual Arts Award and was nominated for a 2022 Hurston Wright Legacy Award for Poetry. Her work has appeared in print, online, and in many journals and anthologies, including Harvard Review, PANK, Poetry Ireland Review, and Kenyon Review. She has received fellowships and scholarships to Cave Canem, Hedgebrook, and more. She is the O.B. Hardison Poetry Series Curator and Poetry Programs manager for the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., and lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, with her husband, poet Hayes Davis, and their two children.
poetsandparents.com
X: @cross_davis
Instagram: @haint_poet
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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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