City of Asylum’s iconic Jazz Poetry Month festival continues this week with a set of acclaimed poets and musicians! Each Jazz Poetry program begins with a full set from a live jazz band, followed by a collaboration with local and international poets. In these collaborations, poets share their work alongside the musicians, the two art forms melding to create that signature Jazz Poetry improvisational style that offers something exciting, new, and unique with each individual performance.
Keeping the celebratory energy going, the second night of Jazz Poetry Month welcomes Nicole Mitchell, the former Director of Jazz Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, playing tribute to a selection of Pittsburgh Greats, including Geri Allen, George Benson, and Erroll Garner. Nicole and her quintet are accompanied by poets Chen Chen, whose debut collection, When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities, was longlisted for the National Book Award; Cameron Lovejoy, a printer and poet who operates the slow press Tilted House; Roya Marsh, author of the poetry collection dayliGht, which was nominated for the 2021 Lambda Literary Award for Poetry; and Ajibola Tolase, a Nigerian poet and essayist whose collection 2000 Blacks won the 2024 Cave Canem Poetry Prize.