Michael Warr

Michael Warr is an award-winning poet and the Poetry Editor for "Of Poetry & Protest: From Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin," published by W.W. Norton. After selling out the first print run of 8000, the anthology was reprinted in 2019. Of Poetry & Protest, which can still be found at bookstores around the country, through distributors, and at libraries and museums, is a collection of poetry, essays, and archival materials, compiled by Phil Cushway, edited and poems selected by Michael Warr, with photographic portraits by Victoria Smith (www.facebook.com/OfPoetryandProtest/). Warr received a $40,000 Creative Work Fund to produce his on-going multimedia project "Tracing Poetic Memory in Bayview Hunters Point" (https://tracingmemory.feltzine.us) where he spent part of his early childhood. His family moved away from Hunters Point when he was so young that he remembers little of the neighborhood. The project “Tracing Poetic Memory,” is based in his return to the community to search for memory and tell his family’s story. Working with digital artist Mark Sabb, Warr integrates his poetry with digital platforms (video, photography, social media, animation, VR and archival materials). In partnership with the Bayview Hunters Point YMCA, the two artists are also worked with youth and their families to create their own mixture of poetic storytelling with digital images. Another ongoing project, “Two Languages / One Community” began with the translation of Michael’s poems into Chinese by poet Chun Yu. They extended that collaboration to engage African Americans and Chinese speakers - who live, work, or learn together - in writing workshops to cultivate their own stories and poems, which are then translated and published. A project website is under construction at www.TwoLanguagesOneCommunity.com and the trilingual chapbook "Catching Memory" will be released in 2019. Michael is a San Francisco Library Laureate and board member of the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library. Other poetry honors include a PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature, Black Caucus of the American Library Association Award, Gwendolyn Brooks Significant Illinois Poets Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship, and the Ragdale Foundation US - Africa Fellowship. “We Are All The Black Boy,” his first book of poems was honored by the Illinois Library Association. A frequent collaborator with musicians, visual and performing artists, his poems have been dramatized for theater, depicted on canvas, and set to original musical composition. He is the founding Executive Director of The Guild Complex, based in Chicago, and more recently the former Deputy Director of the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco, where he grew up. An award-winning arts educator, he combines poetry, performance, and storytelling with digital images, text, and music in interactive writing and mentoring workshops. For more information see www.linkedin.com/in/michaelwarrpublic/ and armageddonoffunk.tumblr.com. To follow his updates of police killings of the unarmed see https://www.facebook.com/OfPoetryandProtest/ and #Poetry&Protest