The Dark Room Collective and Post-Soul Poetics

[...] perhaps most importantly, the Dark Room provided young African American writers "a way of overcoming isolation," an opportunity to "share similar struggles with writing with other Black people" at a time when European Americans still dominated most positions of authority in the US poetry establishment (Strange 296). During its five year run, the series succeeded in bringing to town some of the biggest names in contemporary African American literature, among them Toni Cade Bambara, Samuel Delany, Essex Hemphill, bell hooks, Randall Kenan, Terry McMillan, Ntozake Shange, Alice Walker, John Edgar Wideman, and Walter Moseley.1 Tracy K. Smith recalls the transformative experience of watching people like Michael S. Harper and Thylias Moss give these amazing readings and share the stage with people who were just a little older than myself, and who were taking their art very seriously.