Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem’s First Decade

Founded by prizewinning poets Toi Derricotte and Cornelius Eady in 1996, Cave Canem has for the past ten years dedicated itself to the discovery and cultivation of new voices in African American poetry. Cave Canem began as a week-long summer workshop/retreat for poets and has now expanded to include regional workshops, poetry readings, a series of public interviews between major poets and emerging younger poets, and an annual first book prize. The roster of participants in Cave Canem workshops and events is impressive, including Lucille Clifton, Yusef Komunyakaa, Marilyn Nelson, Sonia Sanchez, Al Young, and many others. This collection of more than one hundred poems by Cave Canem participants and faculty includes: an eclectic gathering of forms, including sonnets, a bop (a new form created by a Cave Canem faculty member), blues, sestinas, prose poems, centos, and free verse.