In Conversation with Three Poets
On Saturday April 23, we hosted three wonderful poets with new books: José Angel Araguz, Quintin Collins, and Daniel B. Summerhill.
These three poets: José Angel Araguz, Quintin Collins, and Daniel B. Summerhill, know each other in ways that go deeper than simply reading at the same event. Quintin and Daniel workshopped together in the Solstice MFA Program, now at Lasell University. After graduation, they trusted each other with their works in progress, emailing work back and forth, one on the East Coast, one on the West. And José serves on the faculty of the Solstice program, where Quintin is now the assistant director.
But that’s just the easy stuff. The not so easy stuff is how these three poets witness the world we move in, how they speak past the inherent, institutionalized barriers they continue to face as creatives, as scholars, as partners, as fathers, as Black and Latinx men.
This is a reading, yes. But it’s also community, and proof that when one poet falls in love with and champions the work of another, poetry turns from solo connection to conversation, to recognition, to witness.