IPS and Split this Rock are celbrating poetry month by bringing some poets into the “tank.” This event is free and open to the public. Bring a brown bag lunch, if you like.

E. Ethelbert Miller is a literary activist. He is the director of the African American Resource Center at Howard University. Mr. Miller is also the board chair of the Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive think tank located in Washington, D.C. He is a board member of The Writer’s Center and editor of Poet Lore magazine. The author of several collections of poems, his last collection How We Sleep On The Nights We Don’t Make Love (Curbstone Press, 2004) was an Independent Publisher Award Finalist. Miller received the 1995 O.B. Hardison Jr. Poetry Prize. He was awarded in 1996 an honorary doctorate of literature from Emory & Henry College. In 2003 his memoir Fathering Words: The Making of An African American Writer (St. Martin’s Press, 2000), was selected by DC WE READ for its one book, one city program sponsored by the D.C. Public Libraries. In 2004 Miller was awarded a Fulbright to visit Israel. Poets & Writers presented him with the 2007 Barnes & Noble/ Writers for Writers Award. In March 2009, Busboys and Poets Press published The 5th Inning, a second memoir. Mr. Miller is often heard on National Public Radio (NPR).

Melissa Tuckey is co-director of Split This Rock, an organization housed within the Institute for Policy Studies. She’s author of Rope as Witness (Pudding House Press, 2007) and her poems have been widely published in literary journals, including Beloit Poetry Journal, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Verse Daily, and anthologized in DC Poets Against the War Anthology, Days I Moved Through Ordinary Sounds, and Poets for Palestine Anthology. She’s recipient of artist fellowship grants from DC Commission on Arts and the Humanities and Ohio Arts Council. She holds an MA in literature from Ohio University and MFA in poetry from George Mason University.