Open Minds Book Series 2023-2024

John Murillo is an American Poet focusing on the struggles of the African American community at large. He has published the following works, Up Jump the Boogie (Cypher 2010; Four Way Books, 2020) and Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry (Four Way, 2020.) The poetry in these works look to highlight unseen American History, that of the African American.

He has earned the following awards, two Larry Neal Writers Awards, a pair of Pushcart Prizes, the J Howard and Barbara MJ Wood Prize from the Poetry Foundation, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Cave Canem Foundation, and the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. 

Murillo currently lives in Brooklyn, NY. He is an assistant professor of English and director of the creative writing program at Wesleyan University. He also teaches in the low residency MFA program at Sierra Nevada University.

(Source: Poetry Foundation: John Murillo)

Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry by John Murillo

ISBN: 978-1945588471

Publication Date: March 2nd, 2020

John Murillo’s second book is a reflective look at the legacy of institutional, accepted violence against Blacks and Latinos and the personal and societal wreckage wrought by long histories of subjugation. A sparrow trapped in a car window evokes a mother battered by a father’s fists; a workout at an iron gym recalls a long-ago mentor who pushed the speaker “to become something unbreakable.” The presence of these and poetic forbears—Gil Scott-Heron, Yusef Komunyakaa—provide a context for strength in the face of danger and anger. At the heart of the book is a sonnet crown triggered by the shooting deaths of three Brooklyn men that becomes an extended meditation on the history of racial injustice and the notion of payback as a form of justice.

Leadbelly by Tyehimba Jess

ISBN: 9780974635330

Publication Date: 2005

A biography in poems, leadbelly examines the life and times of the legendary blues musician from a variety of intimate perspectives and using a range of innovative poetic forms. A collage of song, culture, and circumstance, alive and speaking.

Olio by Tyehimba Jess

ISBN: 9781940696201

Publication Date: 2015

Part fact, part fiction, Tyehimba Jess's much anticipated second book weaves sonnet, song, and narrative to examine the lives of mostly unrecorded African American performers directly before and after the Civil War up to World War I. Olio is an effort to understand how they met, resisted, complicated, co-opted, and sometimes defeated attempts to minstrelize them.

Call Us What We Carry by Amanda Gorman

ISBN: 9780593465066

Publication Date: 2021

Formerly titled The Hill We Climb and Other Poems, the luminous poetry collection by #1 New York Times bestselling author and presidential inaugural poet Amanda Gorman captures a shipwrecked moment in time and transforms it into a lyric of hope and healing. In Call Us What We Carry, Gorman explores history, language, identity, and erasure through an imaginative and intimate collage. Harnessing the collective grief of a global pandemic, this beautifully designed volume features poems in many inventive styles and structures and shines a light on a moment of reckoning. Call Us What We Carry reveals that Gorman has become our messenger from the past, our voice for the future.

32 Poems Interview with John Murillo - Interview with the author of Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry about his work and future plans.

How to Write On a Ledge: Interview with John Murillo about his life and work.

In Silence and in the Streets: Another interview with John Murillo.

John Murillo - Professional website of the author, John Murillo.