Accepting MacDowell Medal, Sonia Sanchez urges compassion through art

Jul. 11—PETERBOROUGH — Sometimes laughing and other times crying out, Sonia Sanchez accepted the 62nd Edward MacDowell Medal on Sunday in a speech urging human compassion and understanding through the arts.

Looking out from beneath the lip of her woven hat, the Black poet, mother and professor called on the crowd that filled a tent on the MacDowell grounds off High Street to be teachers and incite change through kindness, rather than curses.

"It is possible — is it not? — for us all to listen to many different voices," Sanchez said. "It is possible for us all, even though we don't always agree with everything, just to hear the beauty or the concern."

The MacDowell Medal is a national award presented annually since 1960 to an artist who has made an outstanding cultural contribution. Named for composer Edward MacDowell, who founded the artists' retreat in 1907 with his wife, pianist Marian MacDowell, past recipients of the medal include Toni Morrison, Georgia O'Keeffe, Leonard Bernstein and Sonny Rollins.

Sanchez, 87, is the author of more than 20 books including "Homecoming," "We a BaddDDD People," "Love Poems," "I've Been a Woman," "Homegirls & Handgrenades," "Shake My Loose Skin" and "Morning Haiku."

Warm summer air pushed through the tent as she spoke, apparently not reading from the prepared speech she held in her hand, but improvising, jumping from anecdote to anecdote, story to story.

"Is it too late to read my speech?" Sanchez joked, already more than 20 minutes in.

But for all the laughter, there were nearly as many tears. Sanchez recalled memories waking fellow poets in the early morning hours to share a fresh verse and the virtuous cycle of being kind to strangers. She remembered her more than 45 years as a teacher and spoke of an urgent need to spread love and understanding.

"As you go and you walk in the streets of America you've got to listen to them. We've got to listen to each other. We've got to listen to the children. We've got to teach these children," she said. "No. We've got to teach our grandfathers. Right? We've got to teach them that we don't have to be fearful at all, that this is our country."

During what was the first Medal Day open to the public since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic more than two years ago, Nell Painter, the chair of the MacDowell board, introduced Sanchez as a "woman with razor-blades between her teeth."

Though she got her start in Black and non-mainstream publishing houses, Painter said, today, "Sonia Sanchez speaks to all Americans in this frightening moment as politics slam us back into the mid-20th century, into the years when the meanness of American apartheid penalized all of us who were not white, not male, not straight."

Executive Director Philip Himberg noted that since reopening its doors October 2020, after a pandemic-induced hiatus, more than 314 artists in residence have practiced their craft in MacDowell studios.

"Art invites us to traverse a nocturnal space, one which contains powerful seeds. A place which is ripe for the imagination. For dreams and for visions of the pathways ahead," Himberg said. "We are all learning that we need not be afraid of what we do not yet know; artists exemplify this way of being."

Before reading a poem with accompaniment by bassist and composer Jamaaladeen Tacuma — and before those in attendance were allowed roam the grounds, stopping in at the artists' studios — Sanchez left the crowd with a pressing question.

"What does it mean to be human?" she said. "Huh. Unless we answer that question there will not be another century. I can guarantee you that. There will not be another century. That is the question that must be looked squarely in the face now."

Ryan Spencer can be reached at 352-1234, extension 1412, or rspencer@keenesentinel.com. Follow him on Twitter at

@rspencerKS