It's a hard rain that makes a raging flower flourish.

That sustenance has nourished a black poetry tradition in which interest is increasing. Organizers of the new Furious Flower Poetry Center at James Madison University plan to nurture the interest and generate more.

The center's name is from a poem by Pulitzer Prize winner Gwendolyn Brooks, who inspired JMU's Furious Flower black poetry conference in 1994. Sales of a new videotape of readings and interviews from the conference will support the center, coordinated by Joanne Gabbin, who teaches English and directs the honors program at JMU.

The video anthology of black poetry from 1960 to 1995 contains recitations and portraits of about 25 poets -- including Amiri Baraka, University of Virginia professor Rita Dove, Virginia Tech professor Nikki Giovanni, E. Ethelbert Miller, Eugene Redmond and Sonia Sanchez -- in the first such project released, Gabbin, the executive producer, says.

Parts of the six-hour video will be aired on Harrisonburg-based WVPT public television station.

Black poetry and literature are "where people are really doing new and exciting work" in the United States, JMU English department chairwoman Karyn Sproles says.

"People still are excited about Shakespeare, but they know what they're getting with that," Sproles says. Growing interest in black literature among JMU students shows "people are really curious about what's all the fuss."

The poetry center, rare in the nation, will bring JMU national recognition and broaden resources for the community. "It takes the whole celebration of poetry out of the academic realm into the realm of the general public," Gabbin says, "the universal lover of poetry."

The center, now in Gabbin's honors program office in Hillcrest hall, is an archive of videos and books about black poetry and sponsors workshops, conferences and lectures. Among center plans are giving annual national poetry awards to new and established poets and hosting poets at JMU.

Val Gray Ward, director, actress and poetry reciter from Syracuse, is on campus through April, the center's first lecturer in residence. She will direct students in a reading of James Baldwin's "The Amen Corner," April 24-25.

The center also produces books. The first, "The Furious Flowering of African American Poetry," an essay collection, will be published in May by the University Press of Virginia. An anthology of black poetry with photos from the 1994 conference at JMU is planned.

The conference drew about 1,300 people, Gabbin, its coordinator, says. The event focused on poetry after the '50s, inspired in some cases by the black arts movement of the late '60s and '70s and civil rights and women's liberation issues.

Black poetry then and now, Gabbin says, is "aimed at changing society in positive ways. But it's also aimed at being beautiful, poetic."