"Spoken Word" Poet Tracie Morris to Read at Smith College

The Poetry Center at Smith College will present poet Tracie Morris at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 1, in Wright Hall Auditorium.

Morris is at the forefront of the burgeoning international "spoken word" scene. She made a name for herself in the early 1990s at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, the "spoken word" mecca of New York, where in 1993 she was named champion of the Nuyorican Grand Slam. In addition, she won the championship of the 1993 National Haiku Slam and has been acclaimed for her collaborations with other artists, including jazz musicians Donald Byrd and Vernon Reid.

Morris wrote the lyrics for choreographer Ralph Lemon's epic "Geography" (Brooklyn Academy of Music, 1999) and is currently at work on a commissioned project for The Kitchen, a popular art space and performance center in New York. Her tough and sassy hip-hop rhymes have been featured in many anthologies, as well as on radio and television, and she has toured extensively in the United States and abroad. The Brooklyn native was awarded a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, New Faces/New Voices Fellowship and a Franklin Furnace Artist in Exile grant and has published two collections of poems, "Chap-T-her Won" and "Intermission."

Morris' visit to the Valley is presented in collaboration with New WORLD Theater of the University of Massachusetts. Morris will conduct a youth workshop in the Amherst Middle School, a presentation for a theater class at the University and a master class for Smith students. She'll also make a special guest appearance at an "open mic" reading from 9 p.m. to 12 a.m.on Wednesday, Feb. 28, at The Mecca (formerly The Hot Club), 10 Stearns Square, Springfield, (413) 746-2291.

The March 1 reading at Smith College -- which is free, open to the public and wheelchair accessible -- will be followed by a bookselling and signing. For more information, call Cindy Furtek in the Poetry Center office at (413) 585-4891 or Ellen Doré Watson, director, at (413) 585-3368.

Contact: Marti Hobbes, mhobbes@smith.edu

February 15, 2001