Poetry Reading by Jayne Cortez

Acclaimed as original, versatile, and multifaceted, Jayne Cortez is a poet whose extraordinary career includes literary success and impassioned activism inspired by ideals of human dignity and social justice. Cortez is considered the primary link between the creative sound-based poetics of the Black Arts Movement and hip hop performance poetry or “Surrealism.”
A poet, actor, film director, and college teacher, Cortez has been writing and performing her poetry for over 40 years at museums, universities, and festivals throughout the United States, South America, Europe, Asia and Africa. Her poetry which has been translated into twenty-eight languages, fuses politics with surrealism, and blends traditional poetry with the African oral and rural traditions, American black culture, jazz and blues.
She has published volumes of poetry, recorded nine albums, and she has received numerous awards. In addition, she has appeared in the Canadian film, "Poetry In Motion" and in the film "Women in Jazz." She also participated in the music video "Nelson Mandela is Coming" and her poem, "I Am New York City," was featured in an episode of "Tribeca," the Fox television network series.