It’s a long drive from Iowa City to Lake Okoboji. Like most of my colleagues, I’ve never been to Northwest Iowa, and I was curious to visit this red and […]
Caleb “The Negro Artist” Rainey
Album Review: Wave Cage — ‘Even You Can See in the Dark’
Even You Can See in the Dark by Wave Cage “Here we orbit each other with creative collaboration,” says poet Caleb “The Negro Artist” Rainey on the opening and title […]
Iowa City’s Mic Check Poetry Festival to return with a slam in November after ‘phenomenal’ 2021 turnout
Iowa City Poetry’s Mic Check Poetry Festival will return Nov. 11-12 after organizers Caleb “The Negro Artist” Rainey and Lisa Roberts received what Rainey called a “phenomenal showing” of support […]
Iowa City Poetry and IC Speaks kick off new Mic Check Poetry Festival this weekend
Mic Check Poetry Festival, a new addition to the Iowa City festival scene, runs Nov. 5-7 and features a full lineup of both local and nationally known spoken word artists, […]
Mirrorbox Theatre staging the story of Pirates pitcher Dock Ellis, beyond his infamous LSD no-hitter
Editor’s note: After the initial publication of this story, the premiere of ‘This is Not a Game of Baseball’ was postponed due to COVID-19. More details at the end of […]
The Coralville Community Food Pantry offers music, poetry and dance in exchange for support fighting food insecurity
Over the last several years, the food insecurity rate in Johnson County was dropping. According to interactive maps from the organization Feeding America, it went from 13.9 percent in 2016 […]
Best of the CRANDIC Spotlight: Caleb “The Negro Artist” Rainey
Caleb Rainey was voted Best Poet/Spoken Word Artist in Little Village’s 2020 Best of the CRANDIC awards. “The oldest poem I can think of was one in elementary school. Obviously, […]
Book Review: ‘Heart Notes’ by Caleb “The Negro Artist” Rainey
Caleb “The Negro Artist” Rainey’s second volume of poetry was self-published in October, just five months after his first volume (Look, Black Boy) was released. Heart Notes departs from race as its central topic and focuses on aspects of love, which Rainey explores through widely varying structures and types of poems. In fact, if you’ve ever wondered whether
Young spoken-word poets express ‘heartache and joy’ on the Englert stage for the IC Speaks showcase
Stage lights cast a blue hue on a lone mic as attendants trickled into the Englert Theatre to see the IC Speaks Showcase on Saturday night. About a dozen students from West, City, Liberty and Tate high schools filled the first two rows on the theater’s west side. In the hour and a half that followed, the students got up one by one to stand at
Book Review: ‘Look, Black Boy’ by Caleb “The Negro Artist” Rainey
With his first self-published chapbook, Look, Black Boy, Caleb “The Negro Artist” Rainey confronts and challenges his readers while communicating with them on a variety of levels. The central theme of this short collection is how it feels to be a young black man in 2019 in the Midwest.
The Negro Artist and making space for black voices in Iowa
Caleb Rainey, aka the Negro Artist, came to Iowa City to earn an English major at the University of Iowa. Rainey was one of only 57 black men, in his undergraduate class of over 4,000 first-year students, who were not part of a Hawkeye sports team.