Pew Center for Arts and Heritage

Get our monthly newsletter in your inbox for the latest on cultural events, ideas, conversations, and grantmaking news in Philadelphia and beyond.

Main page contents

Questions of Practice: Pew Fellow Sonia Sanchez Reads 10 Haikus for Max Roach

On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Pew Fellowships in the Arts, award-winning poet, playwright, professor, and Pew Fellow Sonia Sanchez (1993) visited the Center for a conversation with her former student and Pew Fellow Major Jackson (1995), as well as a poetry reading of 10 Haikus for Max Roach. Sanchez penned the haiku to mark the passing of her friend and jazz drummer Max Roach. The work is included in the collection, Morning Haiku, published in 2010.

Stay tuned for video excerpts from the conversation, coming next week. Watch Major Jackson read two sections from his suite of poems, Urban Renewal, here>>

The author of more than a dozen books of poetry, Sonia Sanchez has been honored with the Frost Medal, a Women International League for Peace and Freedom Award, and the Lucretia Mott Award, among many others. She is the subject of the documentary film BaddDDD Sonia Sanchez by Pew Fellows Barbara Attie and Janet Goldwater, and Sabrina Schmidt Gordon