{{Short description|African-American poetry collective}} The '''Dark Room Collective''' was an influential African-American poetry collective. Established in 1988, the collective hosted a reading series that featured leading figures in Black literature.
== Founding and activities == After attending the funeral of literary icon James Baldwin in 1987, poets Sharan Strange and Thomas Sayers Ellis, then Harvard undergraduates, with poet-composer Janice Lowe, a Berklee College of Music student, co-founded the Dark Room Reading Series in 1988. The series was named for a project called ''The Dark Room: A Collection of Black Writing'', a library containing the works of black authors which was hosted in a former darkroom on the third floor of their Victorian house at 31 Inman Street in Cambridge.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Strange|first1=Sharan|title=Dark Room Collective: Essay|date=Fall 2006|issue=16|url=http://mosaicmagazine.org/blog/?p=2616#.VOa9LTVVK1E|journal=Mosaic}}</ref>
The Dark Room Collective hosted a writing workshop and gatherings of black artists and writers at the house.<ref name="NYT">{{cite news|last1=Gordinier|first1=Jeff|title=The Dark Room Collective: Where Black Poetry Took Wing|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/27/arts/the-dark-room-collective-where-black-poetry-took-wing.html|work=The New York Times|date=May 27, 2014}}</ref> They were visited by African-American writers including Alice Walker, bell hooks, Toni Cade Bambara, Derek Walcott, Samuel R. Delany, poet Essex Hemphill, Randall Kenan, Terry McMillan, Ntozake Shange, John Edgar Wideman, and Walter Mosley. They hosted a reading series that paired older writers with younger ones.<ref>{{cite magazine|last1=Eady|first1=Cornelius|last2=Alston|first2=Kwaku|title=Reading Ahead|url=http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1996/06/24/reading-ahead|magazine=The New Yorker|date=June 24, 1996}}</ref> The group was influenced by Rita Dove.<ref name="NYT" /> Following problems with their landlord, they relocated the reading series to the Institute of Contemporary Art and later to the Boston Playwrights' Theatre.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Reed|first1=Brian|title=The Dark Room Collective and Post-Soul Poetics|journal=African American Review|date=December 22, 2007|volume=41|issue=4|pages=727–747|url=https://www.academia.edu/3047524}}{{Dead link|date=January 2024 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref>
The series ran through approximately 1998, though a "reunion tour" took place in 2012 and 2013.<ref name="NYT" />
== Influence and alumni == The Dark Room Collective has been influential in contemporary American and African-American poetry, inspiring the creation of the Cave Canem Foundation<ref name="NYT" /> and including many alumni who went on to be highly successful. Future United States Poets Laureate Natasha Trethewey and Tracy K. Smith, ''New Yorker'' poetry editor Kevin Young, Carl Phillips, Major Jackson, Patrick Sylvain, Tisa Bryant, Danielle Legros Georges, Artress Bethany White, Trasi Johnson, Adisa Beatty, Nehassaiu deGannes, Donia Allen, Della Scott and John Keene were among the members of the collective.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Muyumba|first1=W.|title=The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics|date=2012|publisher=Princeton University Press|location=Princeton|isbn=978-0-691-15491-6|page=337|edition=4th|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MJVlZjIe5o8C&q=%22dark%20room%20collective%22&pg=PA337|chapter=Dark Room Collective}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|last1=Bartley|first1=Emma|title=To Borrow and To Burrow: A Look at the Dark Room Collective|date=March 15, 2018|publisher=National Endowment for the Arts|url=https://www.arts.gov/stories/blog/2018/borrow-and-burrow-look-dark-room-collective}}</ref>
==See also== *Black Arts Movement *Harlem Renaissance
==References== {{Reflist}}
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Category:Defunct poetry organizations based in the United States Category:Defunct African-American arts organizations Category:American artist groups and collectives Category:20th-century American poets Category:African-American literature Category:History of Cambridge, Massachusetts Category:Arts organizations established in 1988