Sterling A. Brown work amplifies and materialize the nature of the aesthetic connections that find continuity in contemporary black life. Brown opens, Southern Road with an epigraph of an old negro spiritual: ‘O de ole sheep dey knows de road, Young lambs gotta find de way.’ It is with this, Sterling A Brown highlights the intentions of his work which is ‘to face two directions at simultaneously'. To look forward into the future while facing the past, the poems in Southern Road consider the relationship between the [past and present] and its relevance to Black people entering the European conceptualization of modernity (Gabbin, Sterling A Brown, Building the Black Aesthetic Tradition, 1985: 3. For Sterling A. Brown, diving into the depths of human experience and character necessitated a close look at language. In a 1978 interview Brown stated that, “The poets that struck me were those who were poets of the people and poets of direct—not florid…American speech.” The contribution that Brown offered is a clear understanding that what the ‘new’ poets were doing with language was not new (30). Today Dr. Josh Myers will explore the work of Sterling A. Brown in a presentation titled, A Blue(s) (Note) for Sterling Brown. In addition to being a valued member of the AWNP collective and its affiliates, Dr. Josh Myers is currently an Assistant Professor of Africana Studies in the Department of Afro-American Studies at Howard University. He currently serves on the board of the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations and the editorial board of The Compass: Journal of the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations, he works with the DC area collectives, Positive Black Folks in Action and the Nu Afrikan Cultural Vanguard. His research interests include Africana intellectual histories and traditions, Africana philosophy, critical university studies, and disciplinarity. His work has been published in The Journal of African American Studies, The Journal of Pan African Studies, The African Journal of Rhetoric, The Human Rights and Globalization Law Review, Liberator Magazine, Decolonization: Indigeneity, Knowledge, and Society, Critical Ethnic Studies, and Pambazuka, among other literary spaces. His book, “We are Worth Fighting For: The Howard University Protest of 1989” is forthcoming. Our show was produced today in solidarity with the Native/Indigenous, African, and Afro Descendant communities at Standing Rock; Venezuela; Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi; Brazil; the Avalon Village in Detroit; Colombia; Kenya; Palestine; South Africa; and Ghana and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all peoples! Enjoy the program!