“First fight. Then fiddle.” — Gwendolyn Brooks
We are committed to engaging Black poetry in its diversity of aesthetics and to fostering dialogue and education. We invite you to join us!
The Fight & The Fiddle is the quarterly journal of the Furious Flower Poetry Center at James Madison University. The publication’s name comes from a line of poetry by Gwendolyn Brooks, to whom the center is dedicated. A resource for poets, critics, and educators, each issue of The Fight & The Fiddle features a Black poet and contains a critical article on/review of the poet’s work, an interview (full text and video excerpt) with the poet, new poems, and a writing prompt inspired by the poet.
Poetry: Featured poets are by invitation only and are selected as part of the Furious Flower Reading Series at James Madison University. (Full-length videos of these public readings are available on the Furious Flower YouTube channel.)
While we do not accept poetry submissions for The Fight & The Fiddle, Furious Flower is always on the lookout for emerging and established Black writers to host as a part of the Furious Flower Reading Series at James Madison University. If you would like to be considered, please send a copy of your book(s) and/or press kit to:
Furious Flower Poetry Center
James Madison University
500 Cardinal Drive, MSC 3802
Harrisonburg, VA 22801
Literary Criticism: If you’d like to write a scholarly piece for us, please send a query letter detailing your qualifications and area/poets of interest to Lauren K. Alleyne. Essays can be critical, craft-based, or reviews and focus on work by a specified poet (see examples of the range of scholarly work here). They are typically 2,500–3,000 words in length, and we pay $200 within 30 days of publication.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.