The Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta recently held a workshop to develop a program to increase diversity among critics and reviewers of poetry. The effort is a collaboration of the university’s Poetry@Tech program and the Ledbury Emerging Poetry Critics program in the United Kingdom.
The program included two days of immersive workshops where participants received individualized instruction from top writers, editors, and publishers. The participants will be mentored for at least one year by a member of the program’s faculty.
The program is an extension of a similar program in the United Kingdom founded by Sandeep Parmar, a professor at the University of Liverpool, and Sarah Howe, a lecturer in Poetry at Kings College, London. Since the founding of that UK program in 2017, representation of reviewers of color has more than doubled in two years.
“But improving the numbers is only part of the program’s aim to generate a critical culture that is not only inclusive but also knowledgeable and representative of the diversity of poetry being written today,” said Professor Parmar.
