Kate Rushin

Last updated
Kate Rushin
BornDonna Kate Rushin
1951 (age 7273)
Occupation
  • Poet
NationalityAmerican
Education Oberlin College
Genre
  • Fiction
  • poetry
Notable works"The Bridge Poem"
Notable awardsRose Low Rome Memorial Poetry Prize; Grolier Poetry Prize
Website
katerushinpoet.com/index.php/about/

Donna Kate Rushin (born 1951), [1] popularly known as Kate Rushin, is a Black lesbian poet. Rushin's prefatory poem, "The Bridge Poem", to the 1981 collection This Bridge Called My Back is considered iconic. She currently lives in Connecticut. [2]

Contents

Education

Rushin was raised in Lawnside, New Jersey. [1] She obtained a Bachelor of Art's degree from Oberlin College, and a Master of Fine Arts degree from Brown University. [2] In 2021, she became Poet in Residence in the English Department of Connecticut College. [3] [4]

Publications

Awards

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Audre Lorde</span> American writer and feminist activist (1934–1992)

Audre Lorde was an American writer, professor, philosopher, intersectional feminist, poet and civil rights activist. She was a self-described "Black, lesbian, feminist, socialist, mother, warrior, poet" who dedicated her life and talents to confronting different forms of injustice, as she believed there could be "no hierarchy of oppressions" among "those who share the goals of liberation and a workable future for our children."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ben Okri</span> Nigerian writer (born 1959)

Sir Ben Golden Emuobowho Okri is a Nigerian-born British poet and novelist. Considered one of the foremost African authors in the postmodern and post-colonial traditions, Okri has been compared favourably to authors such as Salman Rushdie and Gabriel García Márquez. In 1991, his novel The Famished Road won the Booker Prize. Okri was knighted at the 2023 Birthday Honours for services to literature.

<i>Callaloo</i> (literary magazine) Academic journal, established in 1976

Callaloo, A Journal of African Diaspora Arts and Letters, is a quarterly literary magazine established in 1976 by Charles H. Rowell, who remains its editor-in-chief. It contains creative writing, visual art, and critical texts about literature and culture of the African diaspora, and is the longest continuously running African-American literary magazine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ruth Ellen Kocher</span> American poet (born 1965)

Ruth Ellen Kocher is an American poet. She is the recipient of the PEN/Open Book Award, the Dorset Prize, the Green Rose Prize, and the Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Vermont Studio Center, the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, and Cave Canem. She is Professor of English at the University of Colorado - Boulder where and serves as Associate Dean for the College of Arts and Sciences and Divisional Dean for Arts and Humanities.

Hambone is a small literary magazine that has published major poets. The magazine is edited by poet Nathaniel Mackey.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pat Parker</span> American poet and activist

Pat Parker was an African American poet and activist. Both her poetry and her activism drew from her experiences as a Black lesbian feminist. Her poetry spoke about her tough childhood growing up in poverty, dealing with sexual assault, and the murder of a sister. At eighteen, Parker was in an abusive relationship and had a miscarriage after being pushed down a flight of stairs. After two divorces, she came out as a lesbian, "embracing her sexuality" and said she was liberated and "knew no limits when it came to expressing the innermost parts of herself".

Gerald William Barrax was an American poet and educator.

<i>Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood</i> 1996 book by bell hooks

Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood is a memoir by bell hooks. It details her childhood experiences as a poor, African-American girl growing up against a background of racial segregation. As described by Kirkus Reviews, "Telling her story in brief vignettes, hooks illuminates each of the elements that composed that world, describing her parents, torn, sometimes to the point of violence, by the pressures that married life brings; an extended family that provided her with room to dream at the same time that it fed her a range of conflicting cues about how to live; a black subculture that instilled a series of painful lessons in color-driven self-evaluation; and finally, a white majority culture that could offer both the benefits of literature and the punishments of racial discrimination."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tim Seibles</span> American poet (born 1955)

Tim Seibles is an American poet, professor and the former Poet Laureate of Virginia. He is the author of seven collections of poetry, most recently, Voodoo Libretto: New and Selected Poems. His honors include an Open Voice Award and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center. In 2012 he was nominated for a National Book Award, for Fast Animal.

Charles Edwin (Ed) Roberson is a distinguished American poet, celebrated for his unique diction and intricacy in exploring the natural and cultural worlds. His poetic voice is informed by a background in science and visual art, coupled with his identity as an African American. Roberson has been an active poet since the early 1960s and has authored eight collections, including "Atmosphere Conditions" (1999) and "City Eclogue" (2006). Among his many honors are the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers' Award (1998) and the Poetry Society of America's Shelley Memorial Award (2008).

Marilène Phipps-Kettlewell is a Haitian-American poet, painter, and short story writer.

Miriam Aparecida Alves is a Brazilian writer, activist and poet.

Krista Franklin is an American poet and visual artist, whose main artistic focus is collage. Her work, which addresses race, gender, and class issues, combines personal, pop-cultural, and historical imagery.

Movement In Black is a collection of poetry by Black lesbian feminist Pat Parker.

Doris Davenport, sometimes styled as doris davenport, is a writer, educator, and literary and performance poet. She wrote an essay featured in This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color entitled "The Pathology of Racism: A Conversation with Third World Wimmin." She also focuses her efforts on poetry and education.

Ruby Bute is a painter, storyteller, and writer of the island of Saint Martin. She became the first woman to publish a book in Saint Martin with her poetry collection Golden Voices of S'maatin in 1989. Bute has been referred to as "the first dame of St. Martin’s cultural arts."

"Mother to Son" is a 1922 poem by American writer and activist Langston Hughes. The poem follows a mother speaking to her son about her life, which she says "ain't been no crystal stair". She first describes the struggles she has faced and then urges him to continue moving forward. It was referenced by Martin Luther King Jr. several times in his speeches during the civil rights movement, and has been analyzed by several critics, notably for its style and representation of the mother.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Honorée Fanonne Jeffers</span> American poet and novelist (born 1967)

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers is an American poet and novelist, and a professor of English at the University of Oklahoma. She has published five collections of poetry and a novel. Her 2020 collection The Age of Phillis reexamines the life of American poet Phillis Wheatley, based on years of archival research; it was longlisted for the 2020 National Book Award for Poetry, and won the 2021 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work – Poetry. Her debut novel, The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois, was published by HarperCollins in 2021.

Angelique V. Nixon is a Bahamas-born, Trinidad-based, feminist writer, artist, academic and activist.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "Kate Rushin". Lift Every Voice | African-American Poetry. Library of America. Retrieved March 14, 2023.
  2. 1 2 "Kate Rushin". Kate Rushin Poet. 22 April 2018. Retrieved 10 July 2020.
  3. "Kate Rushin". Connecticut College.
  4. "Kate Rushin". Poetry Foundation . Retrieved March 14, 2023.
  5. Rushin, Kate (1993). The Black Back-Ups. Firebrand Books.
  6. Rushin, Kate (2000). "After the Accident". Callaloo. 23 (1): 192–193. doi:10.1353/cal.2000.0067. ISSN   1080-6512. S2CID   162145058.
  7. Rushin, Kate (2000). "Word Problems". Callaloo. 23 (1): 190–191. doi:10.1353/cal.2000.0066. ISSN   1080-6512. S2CID   201791768.
  8. Rushin, Kate (2001). "Reeling Memories for My Father". Callaloo. 24 (3): 885–886. doi:10.1353/cal.2001.0208. ISSN   1080-6512. S2CID   161549700.
    • Rushin, Kate. "The Tired Poem: Lost Letter from a Typical Unemployed Black Professional Woman." In Feminism and Community, edited by Weiss Penny A. and Friedman Marilyn, 77–82. Temple University Press, 1995.
  9. Rushin, Kate (1999). "Instructions from the Flight Crew to a Poet of African Descent Living in a State of Emergency". Callaloo. 22 (4): 976. doi:10.1353/cal.1999.0189. ISSN   1080-6512. S2CID   162146206.
  10. Rushin, Kate (1989). "Comparative History: Our Stories". Callaloo (39): 290–291. doi:10.2307/2931563. ISSN   0161-2492. JSTOR   2931563.
  11. Rushin, Kate (November 1983). "Living in My Head". The Women's Review of Books. 1 (2): 15. doi:10.2307/4019445. ISSN   0738-1433. JSTOR   4019445.
  12. Rushin, Kate (November 1983). "The Brick Layers". The Women's Review of Books. 1 (2): 15. doi:10.2307/4019446. ISSN   0738-1433. JSTOR   4019446.
  13. Bowen, Angela (2021), [https://vc.bridgew.edu/jiws/vol22/iss8/32 "1988 Introductory Speech by Angela Bowen for Kate Rushin receiving the Grolier Poetry Prize," Journal of International Women's Studies, Vol. 22, Issue 8, Article 32.