MCL – Poet and Actor David Mills Brings Three Diverse Programs to MCL This April

MANCHESTER, VT–Manchester Community Library will welcome Manhattan-based poet and actor David Mills, who will bring three unique programs to the community. In partnership with Vermont Humanities Council, the Library will host Mills for three dates the first week of April to kick off National Poetry Month. The events will appeal to history buffs, poetry fans, writers, theatre enthusiasts, and many others in the community.

On Tuesday, April 1st, Vermont Humanities Snapshot Series will host David Mills at Manchester Community Library for a reading and discussion of his poetry collection Boneyarn. The presentation will highlight a rarely discussed topic in American history, featuring groundbreaking poems about slavery in New York City. The event will begin at 5:30 pm and will take place in person at the Library as well as online, live streamed by GNAT-TV.

David Mills returns on Wednesday, April 2nd at 11:00 am to lead a writer’s workshop titled “Manhattan Slavery and Your Song”. In this generative and experimental workshop, participants will use excerpts from historical texts about antebellum New York, colonial New York maps, Manhattan slave cemetery photographs, dialogue and documentary poems, and poems about New York City slavery, to meditate on the history of slavery in Lower Manhattan—where the oldest and largest slave cemetery in the United States is located. The constellation of prompts will help workshop attendees to generate poems that incorporate rhetorical strategies found in documentary and dialogue poems.  Ultimately, this workshop will help writers forge an empathic, more-informed, and creative link between themselves (and their poems’ present-day speakers) and Manhattan’s little-known past. No prior historical knowledge is necessary.

Finally, on Thursday, April 3rd at 1:00 pm, Mills will arrive at the Library as Harlem Renaissance writer Langston Hughes. The one-person dramatic rendition of Langston Hughes’ poems and short stories will take the audience on an odyssey spanning five decades of Hughes’ writings, from the 1920’s to the 1960’s. Mills will bring Hughes’ notable characters to life, accompanied by snippets of songs from across the timespan of his works.

Manchester Community Library invites you to delve into history, learn through poetry, and become immersed in the world as presented by David Mills this April. For more information, or to sign up for the April 1st livestream, please visit mclvt.org. All Library programs are free and open to the public at 138 Cemetery Ave, Manchester Center, VT.