Love Poetry Contest!
In celebration of National Poetry Month and the publication of The Progress of Love, we are holding a contest for all you devoted Yale ARTbooks blog followers! A collaborative project between the Menil Collection in Houston, Centre for Contemporary Art in Lagos, and the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts in St. Louis, The Progress of Love invites a dazzling array of 30 contemporary artists from across Africa, Europe, and the United States to converse with one other about manifold forces that shaping our understanding of love.
As a part of this exploration, Elias K. Bongmba details the various forms of love letters and poetry in African Culture in her contribution to the exhibition catalogue. In South Africa, for example, young Zulu women weave together colorful beads, each color weighted with symbolism, into patterns that express their feelings and intentions towards a prospective suitor. A pattern containing white, black and pink would communicate the woman’s purity and hope for a blossoming romance and warn the man not to flirt with other women or waste away his wealth on gambling.
Inspired by the Zulu Love Letter and the coming spring that always seems to bring with it the promise of new love, we at YUP are asking our readers to tweet us your favorite line of a love poem. Whether the poem awakened new love, fanned the flames of an old love, or consoled you during heartbreak, we want to hear from you! Whoever sends us the most creative, heart-rending, or downright funny line will win a free copy of The Progress of Love. Tweet us your favorite line at #YUPpoetrycontest by Wednesday, April 24. On Thursday, April 25, we will announce the winner!
The Progress of Love is an exquisitely illustrated cross cultural exploration of love, edited by Kristina Van Dyke, Director of the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, St. Louis and Bisi Silva, director of the Centre for Contemporary Art, Lagos. The Progress of Love is published by the Menil Collection and the Pulitzer Foundation of the Arts and distributed by Yale University Press.
