The annual Words and Music festival hits a lot of notes, from discussions on incarceration and exoneration to the adventures of Scrim. There’s a virtual event on Sunday, Nov. 16, and in-person discussions and readings are at the Andre Cailloux Center on Nov. 19-22.
Among the writers at the festival is poet Gina Ferrara, who in August became the state’s poet laureate. A professor at Delgado Community College, Ferrara has published five collections of poetry, most recently “Amiss” in 2023, and she was nominated for a Pushcart prize last year. She also hosts the monthly Poetry Buffet reading series.
Ferrara joins four other poets and former Louisiana Poet Laureate Mona Lisa Saloy in a commemoration of the damages of hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Saloy and John Warner Smith edited “Hurricanes Katrina and Rita at 20: An Anthology of Louisiana Poetry and Art,” with work by 44 contributors. The reading will draw on those works. It’s at 5 p.m. Saturday.
A couple of sessions are about issues related to incarceration. The festival’s opening session on Wednesday is titled “Reading for Justice: From Incarceration to Exoneration.” Calvin Duncan made access to court records one of the issues in his recent campaign for New Orleans Clerk of Court. He’s also the co-author of “The Jailhouse Lawyer.” His conviction for a 1981 murder was vacated with the help of the Innocence Project New Orleans, but he became a self-taught “counsel substitute” while serving time at Angola penitentiary. The session also is based in part on the recent Historic New Orleans Collection exhibit about mass incarceration in Louisiana, and some of its contributors will be on the panel. It begins at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday.
The festival closes with “Reading for Justice: Poetry Inside Prisons.” The reading features poets Adam Clay, Michael Kleber-Diggs and Alison Pelegrin, another former Louisiana Poet Laureate, reading their work and reflecting on engaging imprisoned people about reading and writing poetry. The reading is at 6:30 p.m. Saturday.
On the music front, ethnomusicologist and Tulane archivist Melissa Weber, aka DJ Soul Sister, leads a discussion with authors of recent books about George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic. Daniel Bedrosian was the longtime keyboardist for Parliament-Funkadelic, which he chronicles in the book “Make My Funk the P-Funk: Parliament-Funkadelic’s Meteoric Rise in 1975 from ‘Chocolate City’ to ‘Mothership Connection.’” Also on the panel is Seth Neblett, author of “Mothership Connected: The Women of Parliament-Funkadelic.” The session begins at 3:30 p.m. Saturday.
“The Places We Play” is a discussion about local music venues. The panel includes Donna Poniatowski Sims, who ran the brass band hub Donna’s, and musicians Craig Klein and Gladney. Preservation Hall program manager Pamela Blackmon moderates the discussion. It’s at 4:30 p.m. Friday.
A discussion of literature about the Vietnamese community and influence on New Orleans features novelist E.M. Tran, author of “Daughters of the New Year,” and writer and illustrator Thi Bui. It’s at 2 p.m. Saturday.
Author Maurice Carlos Ruffin leads a discussion about how New Orleans has shaped the writing of participants Larry Bagneris, Ambata Kazi, Karisma Price and Blake Sanz. It’s at 4:30 p.m. Thursday.
Former WDSU-TV weathercaster Margaret Orr and artist Matt Rinard collaborated on the children’s book “Scrim My Tail: As Told to Margaret Orr.” They talk about the project at a luncheon event at 12:15 p.m. Thursday.
Other panels address subjects including art, climate change, speculative fiction, literature for young readers and more. There’s also a screening of Dawn Logsdon and Tim Watson’s documentary “Free For All: The Public Library” at 5:45 p.m. Friday.
Many events are free. For a full schedule and information, visit wordsandmusic.org.
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‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source bestofneworleans.com ’
