The “Beyond Meridians” series presents Honoring the Present: Poetry as Self-Care, a performance of poetry and critical thought by poets Kai Davis and Jasmine Combs, in the Commons Meeting Rooms on Thursday, March 8 at 7 p.m.

Kai Davis is a writer, performer, and teaching artist from Philadelphia who served as artistic director of The Babel Poetry Collective from 2012 to 2016. She has performed for TEDx Philly, BET, CNN, PBS, and NPR and is a two-time International Grand Slam champion, winning the Brave New Voices competition in 2011 and The College Union Poetry Slam Invitational in 2016. Davis is also a 2017 Leeway Transformation Award Recipient. In 2015, Davis published the chapbook, Black Chronicle, which explores the timeline of depression and how mental health intersects with blackness.

Jasmine Combs is a performer, writer, and event organizer from Philadelphia. She is a Babel Poetry Collective alum and former spoken word editor for The Fem Lit Magazine. Combs was the 2015 Grand Slam Champion of The Philly Pigeon Poetry Slam, a 2015 National Poetry Slam finalist, and a 2016 College Union Poetry Slam Invitational champion. She won the Apiary Magazine STUNG Writing Contest in 2015, and her winning piece, Night Child, was turned into an animation. Combs published the chapbook, Universal Themes, in 2014.

This is the third event in a series of presentations hosted by Dr. Kalenda Eaton, associate professor of English, as part of the 2017 Frank and Evelyn Steinbrucker Endowed Chair. The “Beyond Meridians” ​lecture series was created to bring scholars and practitioners of​ innovative Humanities scholarship to Arcadia University. This presentation is in collaboration with the Department of English and Creative Writing program.