Truth-Telling Through Art and Poetry: An Evening at Drummond Studios

The Calvary Icons Project invites you to Drummond Studios for an evening of poetry, reflection, and conversation with Peter Mackay and Kendra Y. Hamilton, whose work explores memory, identity, landscape, and the enduring legacies of history. Mackay, recently appointed Scottish Makar in 2024, is a poet, broadcaster, translator, and Professor in the School of English at the University of St Andrews. Visiting Charleston through the Scottish Connections Programme, he is exploring the Scottish diaspora’s relationship to Charleston as a major port in the transatlantic slave trade, with particular interest in Black Scottish Charleston and the Gullah Geechee culture community. Hamilton, author of Romancing the Gullah in the Age of Porgy and Bess, uncovers hidden histories of the Harlem and Charleston Renaissances through scholarship grounded in both journalism and Southern studies. Together, the poets will offer selected readings and reflections that deepen the evening’s themes of memory, resilience, inheritance, and cultural connection, creating space for shared learning and thoughtful dialogue.

The readings take place at Drummond Studios among Michelle Washington’s Against the Grain exhibit. Both the Calvary Icons Project and Against the Grain use art as a catalyst for truth-telling, reflection, and deeper engagement with histories that have often been ignored or obscured. Michelle Washington’s exploration of the transatlantic slave trade and the exploitation of enslaved Africans in the Carolina rice economy closely connects to the Calvary Icons Project’s focus on Charleston as a principal port in the slave trade and on Historic Calvary Episcopal Church as a historic church founded for freed and enslaved Africans in 1847. The projects illuminate the human cost of wealth, displacement, and survival while emphasizing memory, lament, and historical reckoning as necessary steps toward healing and reconciliation. Through immersive artistic expression, sacred storytelling, and spiritual reflection, each invites participants not simply to observe history, but to emotionally and spiritually engage with the enduring legacies of slavery, resilience, and community in Charleston and beyond.

Dr. Kendra Y. Hamilton is the author of Romancing the Gullah in the Age of Porgy and Bess, revealing hidden histories of the Harlem and Charleston Renaissance. She teaches literature and journalism and directs the Southern Studies program at Presbyterian College, bringing a unique blend of academic and real-world experience to her work. Her research and scholarship draw on her background as a journalist to trouble the waters of common understandings of rural Southern lives on both sides of the color line, bringing a unique blend of academic and real-world experience to her work. 

Peter Mackay is a poet, broadcaster, translator and lecturer. He has two collections of poetry with Acair – Galore (2015) and Some Kind of (2020) – and a pamphlet, From another island (2010), with Clutag Press. Originally from the Isle of Lewis, he lives in Edinburgh and is a Professor in the School of English at the University of St Andrews. In 2024 he was appointed Scottish Makar.

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