Lucille Clifton

A woman who greatly influenced my writing is gone.  We were not acquaintances.  I seem to recall seeing her speak once, but I might have been remembering a video I watched in a Bruce Taylor poetry workshop long ago.  Her work is on my bookshelf, and – if she would allow me to say so – between the lines of my own pages.

Some of her work is here.  Hear the power of her reading here.  [Sometimes that audio link doesn’t work.  Here’s the text of the poem she’s reading.]