Tuskegee Airmen Honorary Chapbook by METRO POETS (MSCD, Denver, 2007)

Here’s something I’ve been meaning to make available for a very long time.

Not many people got copies of the original chapbooks which were beautifully designed by Kristofer Adam Speirs, the vice president of Metro Poets at MSCD at the time. I think that a few people other than poetry competition participants and the Tuskegee Airmen themselves (and some of their relatives) received physical copies of the chapbook. As the president of Metro Poets, I did not receive a copy, but (!) somehow I had these files on a computer over this last long while, and now I am able to offer this old chapbook for free for anyone who might want to take a look at it.

This version of the chapbook, which was quickly produced in Canva, doesn’t compare to Adam’s work in design, and the tactile experience of that. I hope to one day produce a better version of this, but for now, I felt that I needed to simply get the task done (it only, afterall, took me more than ten years to follow through with this particular intention).

In addition to a facsimile of the original artifact, I wanted to include some additional artifacts which show the vast amounts of people involved in making the event on which The MSCD Black Student Alliance, the MSCD History Club, Metro Poets, the MSCD English Department faculty (judges) collaborated.

I hope that this chapbook is a welcome artifact. I know that I look upon this event, and the preparation for it with the utmost warmth and gratitude.