Marjory Wentworth and Muyihidin D

Poetry and Protest

Black Earth Institute Fellow 2022-2025

Marjory Wentworth’s poems have appeared in numerous books, magazines, and anthologies. She has been nominated for The Pushcart Prize seven times. She as poet laureate of South Carolina from 2003-2020. Read More

 


 

Some love for
“Out of Wonder: Poets Celebrating Poets”

NPR: “Ostensibly a picture book for children, this collection is an absolute joy – age be damned. Kwame Alexander and collaborators Chris Colderley and Marjory Wentworth have written original poems in the style of some of the world’s finest poets – Rumi, Langston Hughes and Emily Dickinson, among many others. The poems, paired with Ekua Holmes’ bright illustrations, pop off the page and linger delightfully on the tongue and in the mind: “Make a paint box out of letters; add water and dip your brush. Swirl it on the paper with style while you are humming a tune, smiling or standing still. Waiting for the school bus, you can dazzle your friends with the words you have made and strung together like beads around your neck.” (“The Blue Alphabet,” by Marjory Wentworth, celebrating Terrance Hayes)”
–Shannon Rhoades, supervising senior editor, Morning Edition

Buzzfeed: Out of Wonder: Poems Celebrating Poets was featured in Buzzfeed’s books gift guide on Tuesday, December 5th as a recommendation for a new parent! (circ. 17.7 million unique visitors per month online). “Out of Wonder by Kwame Alexander, Chris Colderley, and Marjory Wentworth is sure to instill a love of language in the little ones through its collection of original poems celebrating the poets who inspire them.”

 Center for the Study of Multicultural Children’s Literature: OUT OF WONDER has also been selected by the Center for the Study of Multicultural Children’s Literature’s for its list of the Best Books of 2017.

Playingbythebook.net: “First and foremost a great anthology has to be (pretty much) full of brilliant poetry. That’s definitely the case here, with poem after poem containing lines that leave you scrabbling for a pen to write them out on a scrap of paper, or phrases that raise the corners of your mouth and leave you feeling sparks.”