Lucille Clifton

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Lucille Clifton (born June 27, 1936) is an American poet, writer, and educator from New York. Common topics in her poetry include the celebration of her African American heritage, and feminist themes, with particular emphasis on the female body.

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[edit] Life

Lucille Clifton (born Thelma Lucille Sayles) was born June 27, 1936, and raised in Depew, New York. Her high school career was completed at Fosdick-Masten Park High School. She attended Howard University from 1953 to 1955 and graduated from the State University of New York at Fredonia (near Buffalo) in 1955. In 1958 she married Fred James Clifton. She worked as a claims clerk in the New York State Division of Employment, Buffalo (1958-1960), and as literature assistant in the Office of Education in Washington, D.C. (1960-1971). Her first poetry collection Good Times was published in 1969, and listed by The New York Times as one of the year's 10 best books. From 1971 to 1974 she was poet-in-residence at Coppin State College in Baltimore. From 1979-1985 she was Poet Laureate of the state of Maryland.[1] From 1982 to 1983 she was visiting writer at Columbia University School of the Arts and at George Washington University. From 1985-1989, Clifton was a professor of literature and creative writing at the University of California, Santa Cruz.[2] Since 1991, she has been Distinguished Professor of Humanities at St. Mary's College of Maryland. From 1995 to 1999, she was Visiting Professor at Columbia University.

[edit] Poetry and Prose

In 1969 Clifton's first book, a collection of poetry titled Good Times, was published; in that year it was listed by The New York Times as one of the year's 10 best books. In 1971, Clifton left her civil service position to become a writer in residence at Coppin State College, and during her tenure there she published her next two volumes of poetry Good News About the Earth (1972) and An Ordinary Woman (1974).

Clifton's later poetry collections include Next: New Poems (1987), Quilting: Poems 1987-1990 (1991), and The Terrible Stories (1996). Generations: A Memoir (1976) is a prose piece celebrating her origins, and Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir: 1969-1980 (1987) collects some of her previously published verse.

Clifton's many children's books, written expressly for an African-American audience in mind,[citation needed] include All Us Come Cross the Water (1973), My Friend Jacob (1980), and Three Wishes (1992). She also wrote an award-winning series of books featuring events in the life of Everett Anderson, a young black boy. These include Some of the Days of Everett Anderson (1970) and Everett Anderson's Goodbye (1983). Her children's books now total over 20. Besides appearing in over 100 anthologies of poetry, she has come to popular attention through television appearances on the "Today Show", "Sunday Morning", with Charles Kuralt, "Nightline" and Bill Moyers' series, "The Power of the Word."

[edit] Awards

She received a Creative Writing Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1970 and 1973, and a grant from the Academy of American Poets. She has received the Charity Randall prize, the Jerome J. Shestack Prize from the American Poetry Review, and an Emmy Award. Her children's book, Everett Anderson’s Good-bye, won the 1984 Coretta Scott King Award. In 1988, she became the first author to have two books of poetry chosen as finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. For 1991/1992, she was awarded the Shelley Memorial Award. She received the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry in 1996. Her volume, Blessing the Boats: New and Collected Poems 1988-2000 won the National Book Award for Poetry in 2000. From 1999-2005, she served on the Board of Chancellors of the Academy of American Poets. In 2007, Clifton won the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize; the $100,000 prize honors a living U.S. poet whose "lifetime accomplishments warrant extraordinary recognition."

[edit] Bibliography

Poetry

  • Good Times (Random House, New York, 1969)
  • Good News About the Earth (Random House, New York, 1972)
  • An Ordinary Woman (Random House, New York, 1974)
  • Two-Headed Woman (University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst, 1980)
  • Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir: 1969-1980 (BOA Editions, Brockport, 1987)
  • Next: New Poems (BOA Editions, Brockport, 1987)
  • Ten Oxherding Pictures (Moving Parts Press, Santa Cruz, 1988).
  • Quilting: Poems 1987-1990 (BOA Editions, Brockport, 1991)
  • The Book of Light (Copper Canyon, Port Townsend, 1993)
  • The Terrible Stories (BOA Editions, Brockport, 1996)
  • Blessing The Boats: New and Collected Poems 1988-2000 (BOA Editions, Rochester, 2000)
  • Mercy (BOA Editions, Rochester, 2004)

Nonfiction

  • Generations: A Memoir (Random House, New York, 1976)

[edit] References

  1. ^ "Maryland Poets Laureate," webpage of Maryland State Archives, retrieved May 27, 2007.
  2. ^ Maryland State Archives and Maryland Commission for Women. "Lucille Clifton, Maryland Women's Hall of Fame," webpage from the Maryland Women's Hall of Fame retrieved May 28, 2007.

[edit] External links