Poetry at McLeod on September 10th to Feature Yona Harvey

Press Release

The Charleston County Park and Recreation Commission’s Poetry at McLeod series returns this fall. The first event will be on Saturday, September 10th and features poet Yona Harvey (right) at McLeod Plantation Historic Site.

In this innovative series, African American poets reclaim the plantation landscape by exploring the past, present, future, and the imagined in their own voices. Often representing pain, suffering, survival, and perseverance, the featured poets confirm that plantations are places of conscience.

Yona Harvey will read poetry of her own works from 11 am to 1 pm on September 10th. Harvey is the author of poetry collections You Don’t Have To Go To Mars for Love, which won the Believer Book Award for Poetry, and Hemming the Water, winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. She is also one of the first black women to write for Marvel Entertainment, having co-authored Marvel’s World of Wakanda with Roxane Gay, and Black Panther & the Crew with Ta-Nehisi Coates. Harvey is a 2022 Guggenheim Fellow, and has worked with teenagers writing about mental health issues in collaboration with Creative Nonfiction magazine.

Poetry at McLeod is free to the first 50 participants, and thereafter free with park admission. Advance registration is not required for the poetry sessions.

The following day, on Sunday, September 11th, Harvey will also host a Poet Workshop entitled “Unquiet Blossoms: Writing Tension & Conflict in Poetry” at McLeod Plantation Historic Site. During this session, participants will create a new work by challenging notions that the garden (and by association the natural world) is a place of retreat. The Poet Workshop is free of charge to attend, but registration is required. For additional details on the workshop or to register, visit CharlestonCountyParks.com.

The next event in the Poetry at McLeod series will take place on November 12th and feature Evie Shockley.

CCPRC opened McLeod Plantation as a public county park and historic site in 2015. Located on James Island, McLeod Plantation Historic Site is a former sea island cotton plantation. In 2019, it was named a “Site of Conscience,” a designation that places it among an international coalition of museums, historic sites and memorials that confront both the history of what happened at the site and its lasting impacts.

For more information on McLeod Plantation Historic Site and these programs, visit CharlestonCountyParks.com or call 843-795-4386.

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