Location: Patel Community Space
August 15, 10:00 AM–12:00 PM
November 21, 10:00 AM–12:00 PM
$12 per session

Join poets and performance artists de’Angelo Dia and Jordan Bailey for a two-day generative workshop exploring cinema as a site of poetic response, memory, sound, and imagination. Through guided writing prompts, close viewing, screenings of selective narrative shorts, and discussions of contemporary poetry, participants will craft original works inspired by cinematic imagery, pacing, sound, visual atmosphere, and emotional landscape.

Saturday, Aug. 15th: centers on ekphrastic poetry and the ways film can become language, metaphor, and memory on the page. Drawing from traditions of ekphrastic writing and selections from The Cineaste by A. Van Jordan: a celebrated collection exploring Black cultural memory, film history, and personal narrative through cinema, participants will generate poems rooted in visual storytelling and reflection.

Saturday, Nov. 21st: explores video poetry, sound poetics, and sonic imagination, examining how rhythm, repetition, silence, voice, and soundscape shape poetic experience. Through collaborative listening exercises, screenings, and generative prompts, participants will experiment with the relationship between sound, image, and poetic form.

Open to poets, filmmakers, artists, students, and writers of all levels, this workshop invites participants into creative experimentation across disciplines.

de’Angelo Dia is a theopoet and mystic whose work explores moral imagination through poetry and sound installation. Rooted in the aesthetics of Black liberation theology and Southern Gothic literature, his creative practice engages themes of contemplative spirituality, embodiment poetics, and Gullah mythology.

His poetry collections include bifurcation (Union Presbyterian Seminary, 2022), the poetry zine sacred|spaces (Theurgical Studies Press, 2024), and the chapbook nightshade (Bottlecap Press, 2024). His current manuscript in process, Elegies for the Gods at the Edge of the Universe, is a collection exploring cosmology through archival sounds and sonic collages. His work has appeared in BLACK BOY Journal, The Skinny Journal, Artists Writing on Liberation, Cru Arts & Culture, and elsewhere.

He has received fellowships and awards from Cave Canem, The Watering Hole, the Hurston/Wright Foundation, McColl Center for Art + Innovation, Goodyear Arts, and the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture. Dia serves as the Director of Education & Community Engagement at the Independent Picture House and is a member of DOOMSDAY.704.

Jordan Bailey is a poet, spoken word artist, curator, and teaching artist from Charlotte whose work explores Blackness, mental health, memory, and world building through poetry and performance. Beginning his journey in the youth poetry organization BreatheINK at age sixteen, Bailey quickly emerged as a leading voice in Charlotte’s slam poetry community, becoming a two-time youth grand slam champion before transitioning into coaching and arts education.

A member of the 2018 SlamCharlotte National Poetry Slam Championship team and winner of the 2019 Slam Madness Championship, Bailey’s work bridges spoken word, hip hop, and community storytelling. He is a graduate fellow of The Watering Hole and became an artist-in-residence with Goodyear Arts in 2025. In 2026, he was named the Charlotte GoodLit Poetry Fellow, recognized for his contributions to the city’s evolving literary and performance landscape. Bailey’s performances and workshops center vulnerability, imagination, and liberation, using poetry as a tool for healing, reflection, and communal transformation. His work has been featured throughout Charlotte’s arts community, including performances with BOOM Charlotte and collaborations with local literary and cultural organizations.