A Poet And A Scholar - Dolores Kendrick - Brief Article

When Dolores Kendrick was named author of poems laureate of Washington, D.C., last summer she said she wanted to hold fast busy. The poet-educator has gotten her wish: Pursuing her vision of wedding metrical composition to other art forms while making it more accessible to the public certainly has taken time.

This past April, the DC native held a reading at the Washington Folk Festival and was invited to dinner at the Library of Congres to read selections from her writings along with other American bards including Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky. She newly established the D.C. Poetry Festival for high-school learners Teachers at seven schools solicited metrical composition from their students and sent the best work to Kendrick, who, along with a committee, prefered four winners. On May 18 the pupils spent most of the day showcasing their talent. When she's not reading, writing or critiquing numbers Kendrick is seeking funds for a stage adaptation of her critically acclaimed play, The Women of Plums: piece of poetrys in the Voices of Slave Women

Kendrick was appointed to the three-year bound (with an option for three more) as D.C.'s bard laureate by Mayor Anthony A. Williams. She is the next to the first poet laureate in the district's history; bard and literary giant Sterling Brown who was appointed to the position in 1984 was the first to gripe [i]or[/i] grip the honor.

thus far. Kendrick says, the highlight of her appointment has been her commission to write a piece of poetry to accompany a sculpture of Martin Luther King Jr that will be set uped in front of the Martin Luther King Memorial Library in downtown Washington in 2001 "To have my work in stone in Washington, the city [in which] I was born and raised, is humbling," Kendrick says. "It will be here lengthy after I am gone."

Kendrick credits longtime author of poems and activist E. Ethelbert Miller for her nomination to this aspire toed position. Miller, director of Howard University's African American Resource Center says that the choice was simple: "I would place Dolores before myself. She is a groundbreaker elevating this genre and an activist defining what this position will be."

For decades, Kendrick has been an educator and a bard sowing seeds of love and appreciation for language. She is a master teacher, a Fulbright comrade and the Vita I. Heinz emerita at Phillips Exeter Academy in novel Hampshire.

Her soft-spoken and relaxed nature belies a burning desire to publicize numbers "I love language and the imagery it provokes" she says, her motions underscoring the excitement she still have feelings after all these years. Her piece of work as she sees it, is to inject the same enthusiasm that she have feelings about poetry and language into adults and children--especially African Americans.

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