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Rochester native Cornelius Eady has returned home this week to headline the third annual Flower City Poetry Festival.
“It is fun to come back and read for my hometown,” says Eady.
He is one of several artists who have been at the Highland Bowl’s outdoor amphitheater in the evening this week. Poets from diverse backgrounds have come together to express, represent, and celebrate their communities and experiences. Other notable artists include: Youth Poetry Contest winners, Kimiko Hahn, Amanda Eke, and TYES, a duo featuring voice and cello.
Over his 46-year career, Eady has received many awards, including the Academy of American Poets’ Wallace Stevens Award in 2025. His 2001 collection “Brutal Imagination” was a finalist for the National Book Award.
Most recently, he had the honor of reading a poem titled “Proof” at New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s inauguration. The title and poem acknowledges those unseen people who laid the groundwork for the city’s first Muslim mayor to take office
“For the people who never thought this could happen and now it (has) happened and they are now in the front of the room,” Eady says.
Eady grew up in the Corn Hill neighborhood in the 1960s and as a young man was more interested in music than poetry. The popularity of rock ’n’ roll and jazz caused him to want to be a musician and songwriter. However, as a senior at John Marshall High School, Eady was encouraged by one of his teachers, Johcenn Mason, to consider poetry.
Inspired by the writers and poets he encountered, Eady explored a variety of poetic styles and traditions. Among his influences were renowned Rochester poet Bobby Johnson, jazz poetry and, later, Spanish poetry.
“As a baby poet, I wouldn’t have thought this could happen as an inner city kid,” Eady notes.
In Eady’s view, poetry is responsible for community, and a poet’s responsibility is to represent their community, especially when giving voice to social movements such as the civil rights movement. Eady’s poem, “A Small Moment,” shares this sentiment with the impactful verse: “Some days, I feel my duty, some days I love my work.”
“Where you stood as a poet, your voice was important,” Eady says.
Poetry during that time was important for Black culture to reclaim itself and create a space to talk about experience. Eady’s works of poetry are rooted in his experience in Rochester and “will always have a connection to the city.”
In 1996, he cofounded the Cave Canem Foundation, a literary organization committed to growing Black poets professionally and artistically through fellowships, prizes, and workshops.
Looking back, Eady sees a “staggering difference” from the foundation’s early days to now. Historically, “Black poets have fought to open the doors of future artists, poets, and expression for their community, so future poets do not have to squeeze through a narrow corridor to be seen and heard.”
Eady’s advice to aspiring artists, especially those in Rochester, where they can feel isolated from the rest of the world: “Persist. It’s important you know your voice is important, and your voice is allowed. … Sometimes you don’t feel the power of your writing and creating; people want to hear.”
The Flower City Poetry Festival, presented by Writers & Books and the Highland Park Conservancy, continues through Friday evening, when Eady will read from his work. The festival has been made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts, with support from the governor’s office and the state Legislature.
Kayla Gullage, a student at Rochester Institute of Technology, is a member of the Oasis Project’s third cohort.
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