Overview

Dr. Eugene B. Redmond, who worked closely with the late Katherine Dunham  as one of architects of the Midwest Black Arts Movement of the 1960s, is a poet, scholar, critic, photographer and author/editor of dozens of books including “Eighty Moods of Maya & Other Photo-Poetic Moments,” “Drumvoices Revue: The Richard Wright Centennial Issue,” “The Eye in the Ceiling” (winner of an American Book Award), “Images & Homages,” and seven collections of prose/poetry by the late Henry Dumas, for whose estate he has served as Literary Executor since 1968.

Emeritus professor of English at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, Dr. Redmond has been Writer-in-Residence at Oberlin College, California State University-Sacramento, Southern University-Baton Rouge, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Wayne State University, University of Ibadan-Nigeria, and University of Missouri-St. Louis. His awards include a Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses, a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship, a Tribute to an Elder Award (Afrikan Poetry Theater), induction into the International Hall of Fame for Writers of African Descent, and an honorary doctorate of humane letters from SIUE.

Exhibits of his photos have been held in Africa and across the U.S. at James Madison University, SIUE, Missouri History Museum-St. Louis, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne, East St. Louis Municipal Building, University of Kansas-Lawrence, and University of Alabama-Tuscaloosa. In 1995, with fellow members of the East St. Louis-based Eugene B. Redmond Writers Club, he invented the “kwansaba,” a 49-word poem.

Eugene B. Redmond, poet, essayist and playwright, was professor of English and Poet-in-Residence at California State University, Sacramento. He has taught at several United States colleges and universities, including Southern Illinois University, where he was a colleague of Henry Dumas. Redmond's books of poetry are Sides of the River (1969,) Sentry of the Four Golden Pillars (1970), River of Bones and Flesh and Blood (1971), Songs from an Afro/Phone (1972), Consider Loneliness As These Things, and In a Time of Rain & Desire 1973); his LP recording of poetry, Bloodlinks and Sacred Places, was released by Black River Writers in 1973. He edited Drumvoices: The Mission of Afro-American Poetry, A Critical History (1976) and Echo Tree: The Collected Short Fiction of Henry Dumas (2003)

During the sixties, Redmond edited Midwestern community newspapers and served for two years as senior consultant to Katherine Dunham at the Performing Arts Training Center in East St. Louis. His writings have appeared in numerous periodicals and anthologies, including Black World, Journal of Black Poetry, The Black Scholar, Open Poetry, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Black Orpheus, American Dialog, Discourses on Poetry and The New Black Poetry.

He taught at the Experiment in Higher Education (Southern Illinois University-East St. Louis) where his colleagues included Henry Dumas, Joyce Ladner, and Katherine Dunham. He has authored six volumes of poetry and has edited many more. 

A national and international lecturer, Redmond reaches worldwide audiences with his multicultural messages. In 1999, Redmond joined Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, Walter Mosley, Lerone Bennett Jr., August Wilson, and Henry Dumas as an inductee into the National Hall of Fame for Writers of African Descent. 

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Table

Eugene Redmond is Back in Ibadan, Nigeria

Eugene B. Redmond, professor of English Literature at Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, United States of America, is in the country again two years after his last visit.

A major voice in the enduring tradition of African American Literature, Redmond is Poet Laureate of East St. Louis and is the founding editor of DrumVoices Revue, a multicultural literary magazine. With Toni Morrison, Amiri Baraka and others, he has served as editor and executor of seven collections of Henry Dumas' poetry and prose.

Redmond, whose first visit to Nigeria was in 1978 when he was a visiting lecturer at the University of Lagos, was in Ibadan. in 2004 and apart from John Updike (in the 1970s), Charles Rowell and Ishmael Reed (in the late 90s), he is perhaps the other significant author that has visited Ibadan.

Aside from the interaction he had with students and staff of the Department of English, University of Ibadan, during his last visit, the 1993 American Book Award winner for the collection of poetry, The Eyes in the ceiling, also held a photo exhibition of African American writers entitled Visualizing African American Writers curated by his younger colleague, Dr. Howard Ramsby II, at the Museum of the Institute of African studies, University of Ibadan.

The poet, photographer, and musician who breezed in to town during the week is around to promote the 2005 and 2006 editions of DrumVoices Revue, which features ten Nigerian poets.

He will be hosted on Tuesday, May 23, 2006, 3;30 pm at Educare Trust Exhibition Centre, Coca Cola area, Sango-Oremeji,. Ibadan, where he will sign autographs and sell copies of the journal.

A release signed by Folorunso Moshood, programme officer of Educare Trust disclosed that the occasion would also feature performances by Educare Trust Players.

Source: Nigerian Tribune (Friday 19 May 2006)

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Eugene B. Redmond Writers Club--Founded in 1986 and named after East St. Louis Poet Laureate Eugene B. Redmond, Writers Club trustees include Amiri Baraka, Angelou, Walter Mosley, Barbara Ann Teer, Quincy Troupe, Dr. Lena Weathers, and Avery Brooks. Trustees also serve on the editorial board of Drumvoices Revue. Deceased Trustees include Margaret Walker Alexander (1915-1998), Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000), and Raymond R. Patterson (1929-2001).

The kwansaba, a 49-word poetic form invented during the Writers Club’s 1995 workshop season (in East St. Louis), consists of seven lines of seven words each; each word must contain between one and seven letters. Exceptions to the seven-letter rule are proper nouns and some foreign terms. Previous issues of Drumvoices have featured kwansabas for Katherine Dunham (2004), Amiri Baraka and Sonia Sanchez (2005), and Jayne Cortez (2006).  Following is an example of a kwansaba from Drumvoices #13:

Neo Kwansaba in Barakan Verse (Mali Newman) Poetree grown from stanzas tongues my ears Don’t play Dough Ray Mi Vaso Latte Unless Dada Doowop Dadaism is dead, unless Trans (it) Blues in C, major or minor Died by volumes twenty one times, don’t Play scale up/scale down, while Baraka Breaks off a piece of his mind.

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Eighty Moods of Maya  / Images and Homages: "Memwars"

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BLACK CLASSIC BOOKS   BCP Digital Printing

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updated 13 April 2009