November 4th 5:30PM
UW-L Cleary Center
"These lyrical poems offer insight into the summer of 1919, when nearly 100 African-Americans were publicly executed (14 of them were soldiers who served in World War I), even as they illuminate the lives of African-American men today."--Heather Lee Schroeder
"Johnson's Red Summer startles and impresses with its sheer range of vision, at one moment giving us a hushed, confessional poem, at another a poem of public, political consciousness… Johnson's poems remind us that the human record is at last a mixed one: violence, shame, betrayal, and fear, but also joy, courage, love and, yes, hope."-Carl Phillips
A native of Compton, California, Johnson received his BA in English from Howard University and a MPS in African American Studies from Cornell University. A former Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford, he is Associate Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin—Madison.
Hosted by the UW-L English Department and funded through support of a UW-L College of Liberal Studies Visiting Artist of Color Grant.
UW-L Cleary Center
Winner of the Dorset Prize for Red Summer, Johnson writes of race riots that swept the United States in the summer of 1919. He examines lynching, domestic violence, and love in haunting, passionate poems marked by a tender lyrical quality inspired by the blues, underscored by music so unsettling it leaves the voices and names of the dead lingering in the ear. (Tupelo Press)
"These lyrical poems offer insight into the summer of 1919, when nearly 100 African-Americans were publicly executed (14 of them were soldiers who served in World War I), even as they illuminate the lives of African-American men today."--Heather Lee Schroeder
"Johnson's Red Summer startles and impresses with its sheer range of vision, at one moment giving us a hushed, confessional poem, at another a poem of public, political consciousness… Johnson's poems remind us that the human record is at last a mixed one: violence, shame, betrayal, and fear, but also joy, courage, love and, yes, hope."-Carl Phillips
A native of Compton, California, Johnson received his BA in English from Howard University and a MPS in African American Studies from Cornell University. A former Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford, he is Associate Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin—Madison.
Hosted by the UW-L English Department and funded through support of a UW-L College of Liberal Studies Visiting Artist of Color Grant.
