Two Cave Canem Fellows Receive Residency at Pocantico

New York, NY (April 21, 2010) - Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF), in collaboration with Cave Canem Foundation, North America's premier home for Black poetry, has selected by lottery Cave Canem fellows LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs and Duriel E. Harris to receive a cohort residency at the historic Marcel Breuer House at Pocantico, an architectural landmark located on the grounds of the former estate of the Rockefeller family in the Pocantico Historic Area of Tarrytown, New York. The Pocantico residency is a project that supports artists in their creative process. In connection with his residency, August 2-14, 2010, Ms. Diggs and Ms. Harris will give a reading in the estate's Kykuit Rose Garden.

While in residence, Ms. Diggs plans to further her progress on a new manuscript, letters to the darkening land, a series of poems and letters layering historical, mythical, and factual stories about her family. Ms. Harris hopes to finalize the framework of her third collection, an experimental book-length poem with the working title "The Book of Days."

Writer, vocalist, and sound artist LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs has published three chapbooks, Ichi-Ban, Ni-Ban (both from MOH Press), and Manuel is destroying my bathroom (Belladonna Press), as well as an album, Televisíon. Her work has appeared in numerous journals, including Rattapallax, Black Renaissance Noir, Nocturnes, Spoken Word Revolution Redux, The Black Scholar, P.M.S. Jubilat, Everything But the Burden, and Muck Works. She has received scholarships, residencies, and fellowships from Cave Canem, Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center, Naropa Institute, Caldera Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, the Eben Demarest Trust, Harlem Community Arts Fund, and the Barbara Deming Memorial Grant for Women. She has worked with many artists, including Vernon Reid, Akilah Oliver, Mike Ladd, Vijay Iyer, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Towa Tei, and Guillermo E. Brown; and curated and produced several events with The Black Rock Coalition Orchestra. A native of Harlem, she is a 2009-10 LMCC Artist in Residence.

Duriel B. Harris is the other of Drag (Elixir Press, 2003) and Amnesiac: Poems, forthcoming in 2010 from Sheep Meadow Press. A poet, performer, sound artist, and scholar, she holds degrees from Yale University and the Graduate Creative Writing Program at New York University and a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois. She has been awarded grants from the Illinois Arts Council and post-doctorial residencies at the University of Illinois Chicago and the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is currently at work on AMNESIAC, a media art project funded in part by the UCSB Center for Black Studies Race and Technology Initiative. A co-founder of the Black Took Collective and Poetry Editor for Obsidian, her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including A Best of Fence, African American Review, Beyond the Frontier, Encyclopedia, The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South, and Xcp: Cross Cultural Poetics. She has performed at The Babel Theatre (Beirut, Lebanon), The Blue Note (Posnan, Poland), Links Hall (Chicago), The Poetry Project (NY), Walker Arts Center (Minneapolis), the Studio Museum in Harlem (NY), The Luggage Store Gallery (San Francisco), Poets House (NY), and elsewhere. She is an Assistant Professor of English teaching creative writing and poetics at Illinois State University.

About Pocantico

In 1979, Nelson Rockefeller bequeathed 86 acres of the Rockefeller family estate to The National Trust for Historic Preservation, which subsequently leased the property to the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. As part of its agreement with the Trust, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund assumed stewardship

of property and the responsibility for providing public access, in addition to offering educational and philanthropic programs on the estate. The Fund oversees the maintenance, care, conservation and restoration of the estate's historic buildings, gardens and collections of decorative and fine art. The property includes the family house, Kykuit, built in 1909 and 1913; the Orangerie of 1908; the Coach Barn of 1902 and 1913; and the Marcel Breuer House at Pocantico, built in 1949.

Marcel Breuer House at Pocantico

Marcel Breuer (1902-1981) was one of the most influential architects and furniture designers of

the 20th century. The Marcel Breuer House, commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art in 1948 as an exhibition building in the Museum Garden, was his vision of how the average American family could live in a well-designed, modern, expandable, affordable home. Called "a very human house, evoking a human response" by architectural critic Lewis Mumford, his design influenced modern residential architecture with its use of glass, wood and natural stone, along with its incorporation of distinct activity zones to define the motion and flow of both interior and exterior spaces. The house was moved to the Rockefeller estate in 1950 and presently is being restored as closely as possible to the original design.

Rockefeller Brothers Fund

Founded in 1940, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund encourages social change that contributes to a more just, sustainable, and peaceful world. The RBF's grant making is organized around three themes: Democratic Practice, Sustainable Development, and Peace and Security and three pivotal places: New York City, Southern China, and the Western Balkans.

Cave Canem Foundation

Founded in 1996 by poets Toi Derricotte and Cornelius Eady to remedy the under-representation of African American poets in writing workshops and MFA programs, Cave Canem is a home for the many voices of African American poetry and is committed to cultivating the artistic and professional growth of African American poets. Cave Canem has grown from an initial gathering of 26 poets to become an influential movement with a renowned faculty and a high-achieving national fellowship of 300-plus. Its programs include an annual week-long retreat, first and second book prizes, Legacy Conversations, Poets on Craft talks, writing workshops, Publication, and national readings. Such world-class poets as Elizabeth Alexander, Lucille Clifton, and Yusef Komunyakaa number among the organization's faculty and judges. To date, the organization has published Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem's First Decade (University of Michigan Press, 2006) and The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South (The University of Georgia Press, 2007). For more information, go to cavecanempoets.org.