I started the Morris Brown College Poetry Club in 2025. It was designed to provide students with an outlet to express themselves in a safe and effective way. Since I am currently researching the use of poetry therapy and its impact on mental health in the African American community, the Poetry Club is serving as a primary research tool to determine how impactful this outlet is in improving students’ mental health. After each event, surveys are sent to participants to gather data needed for both research and ideas for future events. With this in mind, the Poetry Club serves as a catalyst for decreasing students’ suicidal ideations and attempts, which is becoming a greater issue among the HBCU community.
In addition to addressing mental health, the ultimate goal of the Poetry Club is for students to create a poetry collection for themselves. Although the details regarding sales and publishing are still being worked out, having students create this poetry collection will introduce them to the art of editing and publishing, as well as the act of getting their thoughts on the page in a formatted manner. Developing formatted and structured writing is a critical piece because many students tend to struggle with skills such as writing, critical thinking, and analysis when they start or return to college. Having them work on poetry in the Poetry Club assists with issues such as form, following certain instructions from prompts, and sharing content for review before being released. These are all important things to keep in mind because we want to ensure that the poetry collection created is a strong representation of literary talent at Morris Brown College.
Also, with students learning more about editing and publishing, it will help to expand the creative writing scene at Morris Brown College, which up to this point has been almost nonexistent. The creation of the Poetry Club is also serving as somewhat of a pipeline and gateway not only for students to express themselves, but also for generating ideas for certain classes to offer, such as Intro to Poetry, African American Literature, and Advanced Grammar and Composition. The goal is to take that interest and develop a passion for learning more about African American poetry and prose. The Poetry Club and the aforementioned classes will work in tandem to provide better understanding of various forms of poetry. This is meant to help students understand that poetry isn’t just about rhyming or making sure that you have a certain number of lines; but it’s also about generating different forms and working to follow the form in the way that best fits the end goal.
The Poetry Club currently has five student officers. Donahvan Jones is the president, Olivia Wright is the vice president, Tiara Moore is the secretary, Zenobia Coltrane is the parliamentarian, and Zaria Branch is the treasurer. Each of these officers participates in spirited discussions with me to plan various events, explore ideas for collaboration with other clubs on campus, and consider how to draw more students to our respective events and other opportunities. Regarding collaboration, the Poetry Club has worked with the Psychology Club and the Music Department, and we plan to collaborate with other organizations on campus very soon. In fact, in addition to creating a poetry collection, another goal is to ultimately create an audiobook. However, this audiobook will be unique in that students will read their poems while music students play instruments in the background, creating a distinct vibe for the listener.
The main prompt we give students is to write about what is weighing heavily on their mind. We want to start with this theme so that students feel comfortable with writing in general before we task them with putting some specific types of poems together. Another aspect of collaboration that we are working on is workshops, specifically with fellow poet and author Ms. Dhayana Alejandrina. Ms. Alejandrina will work with the MBC Poetry Club to deliver workshops and offer valuable advice to future writers as part of the program’s expansion.
My hopes for further developing both the club and the class on poetry and writing in general are to develop a concentration in English. Another future goal regarding the Poetry Club is to develop a sort of bachelor’s and master’s pipeline for English in creative writing, where students who take more of the writing and creative writing–based classes can be better prepared and more equipped for master’s work, despite there currently being no master of fine arts programs at HBCUs. Nonetheless, having students be prepared to pursue master’s-level work in English and creative writing can help to steer this conversation in a direction where an HBCU does have an MFA program. Overall, the Morris Brown Poetry Club is serving as a cornerstone in molding educated Black scholars who can use their writing talents to control their mental health.
Dr. Mack Curry IV was born and raised in Bowie, Maryland. He graduated from Hampton University in Hampton, Virginia, with a bachelor of arts in English in 2013. He then received his master of fine arts in creative writing from Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, in 2016, where he completed a poetry thesis titled Sex, Love, and Black Lives. Next, Dr. Curry received his doctorate in philosophy with a focus in rhetoric and composition from Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia, in 2020. His dissertation is titled Adopting Home Language and Multimodality in Composition Classrooms. Dr. Curry’s specializations are poetry, rhetoric and composition, and African American Vernacular English (AAVE). Dr. Curry published his first complete poetry collection titled Sex, Love, and Black Lives in 2024 through Finishing Line Press. He currently serves as the department chair of General Studies, assistant professor of English, and Poetry Club faculty advisor at Morris Brown College in Atlanta, Georgia. Aside from teaching, Dr. Curry is also a graduate of the UNCF/Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship and a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Incorporated.