INDIANAPOLIS — A two-story outdoor mural of Black Arts Movement poet Etheridge Knight (1931-1991) will be unveiled at a free public event at 5:30 p.m. Friday, June 30, at the Chatterbox Jazz Club, the Indy Arts Council announced.
Knight, who became a poet while incarcerated in the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City in the 1960s, was a regular at the Chatterbox in the late 1980s and taught some of his Free People’s Poetry Workshops there.
The free event will feature memories shared by Knight family members; a reading by poet Elizabeth Gordon McKim, Knight’s longtime partner and the author of the new memoir Elizabetheridge; and performances by Indianapolis-based poet Ashley Mack-Jackson and musician Carl Hines. Guests can also explore the Black Worldschoolers Mobile Bookstore and buy Knight’s books from Ujamaa Community Bookstore.
The Knight mural is the third in the City of Indianapolis Bicentennial Legends series. Created by Sunrise, Florida-based artist Elio Mercado, the portrait combines visual elements inspired by lines from Knight’s poetry. The mural’s color scheme takes a cue from the cover of Knight’s Belly Song and Other Poems (1973), a Pulitzer Prize-nominated work. Mercado is being assisted by Indianapolis-based painter Kaila Austin, as part of the Bicentennial Legends apprentice program.