Thursday 27 April 2023

Selected Poems of Calvin C. Hernton: Preview






















A sneak peek at the pre-publication copy of Selected Poems of Calvin C. Hernton, forthcoming in August, just received in the mail from Wesleyan UP. Four years in the making, and edited across a pandemic, with enormous gratitude to my co-editor Lauri Scheyer, an exemplary collaborator I've been privileged to work with, to Ishmael Reed for his foreword, and to the press for their amazing job with design, typesetting and proofing, and for helping make Hernton's work available to a new generation of readers. (Wesleyan are also putting out a New and Selected A.B. Spellman, edited by Lauri, and a collection of material relating to Umbra edited by Tonya Foster, J-P Marcoux and myself.) 

More on Calvin Hernton in my book A Black Arts Poetry Machine (a phrase from Hernton gives the book its title) and on this blog--here and here. Also highly recommended, Hernton's reading on the extremely rare LP Destinations: Four American Poets, which also features an astonishing reading from Hernton's Umbra comrade N.H. Pritchard. Both have been uploaded to YouTube: I've embedded Hernton's reading below.

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