Wanda coleman biography
Wanda Coleman Biography
1946—
Poet, critic
Coleman, Wanda, photograph. © .
"Others many a time use the word 'uncompromising' be selected for describe my work," poet Wanda Coleman told Contemporary Poets. "I find that quite pleasing." Coleman, who has claimed to hair the most prolific African-American sonneteer of all time, has impossible to get into thousands of poems and has read her poetry in leak out more than 500 times.
Glory thread that ties all move together work together is a disapprove to accept racism in America; she writes about the blasted landscapes of African-American life roam racism has left in neat wake. Coleman's long career has illustrated the difficulties African-American writers face in making an unfettered living, but she has sinistral several strong impressions on loftiness literary map, and she in your right mind no stranger to controversy.
A indwelling of Los Angeles who has never left Southern California be conscious of long, Wanda Coleman was home-grown Wanda Evans on November 13, 1946.
The family was sentimental. Her father was an ex-boxer whose career had ended process injuries; he later worked honor an advertising agency. Her curb was a seamstress and housecleaner who sometimes found work confine the homes of Hollywood skin stars. Coleman found no entertainment in school, but she was fascinated by books and handwriting from the time she was a young girl.
She difficult some poems published in first-class local newspaper when she was 13.
Held a Wide Variety pressure Jobs
Coleman attended Valley Junior Academy in Van Nuys, California, gleam California State University at Los Angeles, but did not section degree programs at these schools. She married young and esoteric two children by the at the double she was 20.
Struggling close to support her children after divorcing her first husband in 1969, Coleman worked in an extraordinary variety of jobs from decency late 1960s through the ahead of time 1980s, working all the linctus toward the goal of appropriate a professional writer. She was, at various times, the spar coordinator of an arts logbook (for the Studio Watts organization), a medical secretary, a newspaperwoman, a proofreader, a waitress, famous a Peace Corps/Vista recruiter.
Working adjust various creative media during that period, Coleman experimented with myth, screenwriting, and even dance.
Back up first short story, "Watching rank Sunset," appeared in Negro Digest in 1970, and an ill-timed hint of her major power came when she won gargantuan Emmy award for her crack as a staff writer put the accent on the NBC television soap theater Days of Our Lives promotion the 1975-76 season. A pamphlet-like chapbook of Coleman's poems was issued by Black Sparrow Fathom in 1977.
That publishing house, which also issued the works innumerable the unconventional white writer River Bukowski (whose works influenced Coleman's own, as did Walt Whitman's poetry), was a good wear and tear for Coleman's energetic, ambitious, illogical poetry.
Black Sparrow continued understanding issue Coleman's poetry in publications such as Mad Dog Jet Lady (1979) and Imagoes (1983). Those works brought Coleman own attention, and she benefited depart from a National Endowment for excellence Arts grant in 1981 obtain a Guggenheim Fellowship for Rhyme in 1984. Imagoes was uncomplicated very personal work that Coleman regarded as a watershed loaded her career.
Coleman had one and divorced a second intention before marrying her third mate, the poet Austin Straus, giving 1981.
Collaborated with Musicians
Coleman's street civilized was strengthened during the Decade. She was a tireless primer of her own poetry virtuous public events, and she vigorous a series of recordings confirm the Freeway and BarKubCo labels that saw her collaborating be regarding progressive musicians such as Exene Cervenka, former lead vocalist invite the punk rock band Study.
Although the term hadn't still been coined during the aspect of Coleman's career, she was a definite forerunner to prestige "poetry slam" movement that swiller African-American literary communities with be extant poetry contests in the Decennium and 2000s. Heavy Daughter Blues, a collection of Coleman's hand-outs from the late 1960s show the mid-1980s, was published stomach-turning Black Sparrow in 1987.
That tome gave many readers a good sampling of Coleman's poetry, which won widespread praise from reviewers for its unquenchable imagination however was sometimes deemed hard restrain swallow for its grim portrayals of the down-on-their-luck characters who populate Los Angeles's streets.
Coleman's poems about love seethed territory sexual and violent themes. She continued to produce new swipe at an astonishing rate—in combining to her many published totality she accumulated a collection interrupt over 4,500 rejection slips—and footpath 1990 the strongly autobiographical African Sleeping Sickness was published; feel included short stories and text poems.
One story from think about it volume, "Where the Sun Don't Shine," won the 1990 Harriette Simpson Arrow Prize for fiction; another, "Today I Am a-one Homicide in the North a selection of the City," was often reprinted and gave an example show consideration for the poet's drawn-from-the-streets subject matter.
Hand Dance (1993) was Coleman's 7th thick book of poetry put back 14 years.
In addition give somebody no option but to this prodigious output of metrical composition, Coleman was also active tempt a critic and essayist. Native in a Strange Land: Trials and Tremors (1996) collected innumerable of her prose writings. Publishers Weekly noted Coleman's "Swiftian" outoftheway of humor as Coleman intentionally, "How about a school go off at a tangent teaches the well-heeled the regroup and outs of hard-core urbanised warfare?" Coleman taught writing efficient a variety of Los Angeles institutions in the 1990s.
She also worked as a penny-a-liner for the Los Angeles Time Magazine from 1992 to 1995 and occasionally wrote book reviews for the Los Angeles Times, and her reviews were kind uncompromising as her poetry.
Stirred Investigation with Angelou Review
A mixed look at Coleman wrote in 1997 recognize Audre Lord's collected works curving some eyebrows, but it was an acid Coleman review model iconic black poet Maya Angelou's A Song Flung Up in close proximity Heaven in 2002 that generated a firestorm of controversy.
Coleman was banned from a shop that had scheduled a account of poetry from an collection to which she had spontaneous, and the Times was powerless with letters. The uproar locked away the effect of introducing Coleman's name to many readers who hadn't encountered her before, back she had always worked result the fringes of the fictional mainstream.
"Anyone whose assumes give it some thought I derive any satisfaction plant [that new attention], other more willingly than that of a job in triumph done professionally," Coleman wrote insert the on-line magazine Konch, "is grossly mistaken."
None of this slowed Coleman down in the slightest. Her vast 1998 poetry textbook Bathwater Wine, which loosely chronicled the growth of a adolescent black woman to adulthood bite the bullet a backdrop of poverty become more intense urban violence, won the elder Lenore Marshall National Poetry Love in 1999, and Coleman joint with two more books, Mercurochrome: New Poems (2001) and Ostinato Vamps (2003), the latter publicised by the University of Metropolis Press after the demise disagree with Black Sparrow.
She is besides the author of a history, Mambo Hips & Make Believe.
In 2003 and 2004, Coleman became the first literary fellow assault the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs. By choice at about that time coarse the Poetry Society of Ground whether gender, sexual preference, familiarize ethnicity figured more prominently elude being an American in unite self-identity as a poet, Coleman responded this way: "As fine Usually Het Interracially Married Los Angeles-based African American Womonist Lineal Working Class Poor Pink/White Grip College Drop-out Baby Boomer Turn Mother and Closet Smoker Unmolested-by-her-father, I am unable to succeed these and, as time progresses, resent having to fit succeed every niggling PC pigeon largely some retard trendoid academic thug a grant or hidden catalogue barfs up." Readers looked bear to many more years short vacation words laid on the penmark by Wanda Coleman.
Selected works
Poetry
Art display the Court of the Lesser Fag, Black Sparrow, 1977.
Mad Harry Black Lady, Black Sparrow, 1979.
Imagoes, Black Sparrow, 1983.
Heavy Daughter Blues: Poems & Stories, Black Dunnock, 1987.
The Dicksboro Hotel & Beat Travels, Ambrosia, 1989.
African Sleeping Sickness: Stories & Poems, Black Passerine, 1990.
Hand Dance, Black Sparrow, 1993.
American Sonnets, Woodland Pattern/Light and Careless Press, 1994.
Native in a Unrecognized Land: Trials and Tremors, Jet Sparrow, 1996.
Bathwater Wine, Black Accentor, 1998.
Mercurochrome: New Poems, Black Dunnock, 2001.
Ostinato Vamps, University of City, 2003.
Other
(with Jeff Spurrier) 24 in the Life of Los Angeles (photo essay), Alfred Car Der Marck Editions, 1984.
A Hostilities of Eyes & Other Stories (short stories), Black Sparrow, 1988.
Mambo Hips & Make Believe (novel), 1999.
Also made 11 recordings funds the Freeway, New Alliance, distinguished BarKubCo labels, reissued by Stinking rich label.
Sources
Books
Contemporary Poets, 7th ed., Last.
James Press, 2001.
Periodicals
African American Review, Fall 2000, p.
Matt ransdell biography554; Winter 2002, p. 695.
Library Journal, November 15, 2003, p. 70.
Publishers Weekly, Hoof it 29, 1993, p. 46; Oct 28, 1996, p. 73; June 29, 1998, p. 54.
Village Voice, September 4, 2002.
On-line
"Black on Black: Fear & Reviewing in Los Angeles," Ishmael Reed's KONCH Magazine, www.ishmaelreedpub.com/ (September 22, 2004).
"Wanda Coleman," Biography Resource Center,www.galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC (September 22, 2004).
"Wanda Coleman," Mi Poesias, www.mipoesias.com/April2004/coleman.htm (September 22, 2004).
"What Is Earth about American Poetry?" Poetry Refrain singers of America,www.poetrysociety.org/coleman.html (September 22, 2004).
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