Furious Flower Poetry Center Records

The Furious Flower Poetry Center (FFPC) was established in 1999 by Joanne V. Gabbin when she was the director of James Madison University’s Honors Program. With this flagship of the Honors Program, she continued the kind of programming she had begun by hosting the 1994 Furious Flower Poetry Conference, which was the nation’s first scholarly conference on Black poetry. The conference, entitled Furious Flower: A Revolution in African American Poetry, was dedicated to acclaimed poet Gwendolyn Brooks and featured scholars, critics, and the most accomplished and esteemed poets of the time including Nikki Giovanni, Rita Dove, Sonia Sanchez, Michael S. Harper, Haki Madhubuti, and Gwendolyn Brooks herself. The name “Furious Flower” is derived from Brooks’ poem Second Sermon on the Warpland in which she writes:

The time cracks into furious flower. Lifts its face all unashamed. And sways in wicked grace.

Many who participated in the inaugural Furious Flower conference had their roots in the Black Arts Movement. The Black Arts Movement emerged in the wake of the Black Power Movement of the 1960s and 1970s and was comprised of politically motivated black visionaries, poets, artists, dramatists, musicians, and writers. The conference was met with overwhelming praise and The Washington Post called it an historic event.

Due to the success of the 1994 Furious Flower Conference, the Furious Flower Poetry Center (FFPC) was established in 1999 and the Conference became a decennial event, held every ten years. The subsequent conferences were Regenerating the Black Poetic Tradition (2004) and Seeding the Future of African American Poetry. Conference programming is comprised of concerts, readings, roundtable and panel discussions, and paper presentations.

In 2005, following the success of the second Furious Flower Poetry Conference (2004), JMU gave the FFPC its official charter, making it the first academic center in the United States devoted to Black poetry. Gabbin became its executive director, leaving the Honors Program after 19 years of service.

Today, the FFPC is committed to “cultivating, honoring, and promoting the diverse voices of African American poets by making the genre accessible to a wide audience and collaborating with educational and cultural institutions, literary organizations, and artists.” It hosts visiting poets for readings at JMU and nearby venues; sponsors workshops; holds an annual poetry camp for elementary and middle school-aged children; produces texts, videos, DVDs and other materials on African-American poetry; and gathers poets and other scholars for intimate panels and seminars, as well as major conferences. FFPC has held three decennial Furious Flower Conferences: “A Revolution in African American Poetry” (1994), “Regenerating the Black Poetic Tradition” (2004), and “Seeding the Future of African American Poetry” (2014).

FFPC is located off of Martin Luther King Jr. Way/Historic Cantrell Avenue. Beyond her duties as Executive Director of the Furious Flower Poetry Center, Joanne Gabbin is a professor of English at JMU, a published author, and a member of the International Literary Hall of Fame for Writers of African Descent.