Pleasures of Poetry (POP) Hour present… Professor & Poet Patrick Sylvain as he leads a close reading of two poems by Reginald Dwayne Betts & Yusef Komunyakaa

Patrick Sylvain is a Haitian-American poet, educator, translator, and scholar of global and postcolonial literatures. An Assistant Professor at Simmons University and a former member of the History and Literature Tutorial Board at Harvard. He holds degrees from UMass Boston (B.A.), Harvard (Ed.M.), Boston University (MFA), and Brandeis (Ph.D., English). Sylvain is a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet and has published widely on Haiti and the Haitian diaspora, with work appearing in Ploughshares, Transition, Callaloo, Caribbean Writers, American Poetry Review, and Prairie Schooner. His books include Underworlds (2018), Education Across Borders(2022). Forthcoming works in 2026 include: A Critique of Haiti’s Political Leadership: Scorched Pearl of the Antilles (Palgrave Macmillan) and poetry collections from Central Square Press: Unfinished Dreams / Rèv San Bout; Arrowsmith Press: Fire on the Tongue, and Finishing Line presses: (2026). He is also a featured artist on Benjamin Boone’s Jazz Cds The Poets Are Gathering, and Caught in the Rhythm.