The Howard County Poetry & Literature Society (HoCoPoLitSo) presents E. Ethelbert Miller in a reading centered on activism and history, Friday, Oct. 23, 8 p.m., the fifth in the annual Lucille Clifton Poetry Series, in the Monteabaro Recital Hall, Horowitz Performing Arts Center on the campus of Howard Community College. Miller, a longtime friend of Clifton, the National Book Award-winning poet who was HoCoPoLitSo’s artistic advisor for decades, will read his work focused on history, activism, education and poverty, as well as some of Clifton’s works. Recent turmoil in America’s cities cries out for the powerful witness of poets. Admission is free, but reservations are necessary. For tickets visit: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/2226565 or call 443.518.4568.

“As long as America does not believe that our shared history is what has made all of us what we are, somebody has to say something. And I'm a poet, surely I can say something,” Clifton told an interviewer in 1991. Miller is a poet who adheres to that standard of truth-telling. The author of six collections of poetry, the most recent in 2004, How We Sleep on the Nights We Don’t Make Love, as well as the editor of In Search of Color Everywhere: A Collection of African-American Poetry, Miller was for forty years the director of the African American Resource Center at Howard University.